You sound like someone, David - since this does seem to be your No.1 concern - who regularly fails to be able to provide your clients with some images that they would want to use afterwards, for the price you have quoted them beforehand - even though you seem to be fully aware that things like this could happen beforehand.
So I guess that's why you want people beforehand, to agree to hire you and pay you for 'your time & expenses' instead - because then all you have to do is turn-up, with whatever equipment they have also agreed to pay you for, to bring along... which I assume your clients do, unlike Chris', since you mentioned 'the cost of the equipment' here.
Is that correct ??
Just so you know, that figure I mentioned to you in private the other day, when I asked you "how many hotels in your part of the world would be willing to that amount" - to which you replied "very few" - well that is in fact how much these people paid me here, for the Rights to use each of these 2 images, after seeing the final results.
So my question to you here is: If that was the sort of money that you could possibly make, for taking two very simple exterior shots like this, how many days would be willing to put aside here, to ensure you got something that they would want to use in the end - besides another excuse for you having failed once again, due to you either not having done your homework beforehand or you not caring, because all you are really interested in, is being paid for 'your time & expenses' to turn-up ??
Very few people want to pay me for excuses David, or for something that they can't use or are able to use - so when I quote a price beforehand, that price is based on me providing them with something that they will want to use, rather than based on me just turning-up - and so the fee is based on the use, rather than on an excuse 
I have never failed to provide a client with images they wanted to use and you have misrepresented what I said in the conversation you cite. We were discussing long-distance travel, and you said for you to travel half way around the world that you would need a client who wanted a minimum of 5 images at a fee of a minimum of $2,000 apiece, and you asked me whether I thought there were many hotels in my area, for example, that would have that sort of need and budget, to which I replied that I thought that there were very few hotels in my area that would pay that rate per image, and that at that rate they would probably only want one or two images. This is consistent with the example you just cited above, which involves a couple of extremely high-end hotels that only wanted one or two images from you at that rate.
Would I take some additional risks for the kind of fee that you mention? Possibly. It would depend upon what the overall deal was, and what I would be risking beyond my own time. Taking the hotel exteriors you have given as an example, if the weather had not been clear, do you think the client would have wanted to use photos shot under cloudy or rainy conditions? If not, for how many days or weeks would you have been willing to stay at those locations, or how many return trips would you have been willing to make, in order to be able to shoot under clear weather conditions, so that you could get a result that you were reasonably confident that the client would want? Let's take it even further and say that the hotels were not in Ireland but in a completely different part of the world. The way you seem to be describing it, if necessary, you would be willing to take a loss in order to deliver photos that the client wanted. Is that correct?
As to "homework", there is only so much of that you can do when it comes to the weather in some parts of the world.
