Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Pro Business Discussion => Topic started by: joeclarkx on July 22, 2018, 12:11:16 pm
-
Looking for input on how others manage weather dependent jobs in terms of bookings, shoot-days and ultimately billing.
In my case my clients are architects or PR agencies working on their behalf. If the weather goes a bit wrong on the agreed shoot day, I tend to go back to site on my own time to get the coverage I'm missing. I have a feeling I may be making an error there.
My uncertainty is around the situation when my client wants to be on-site, meaning that we have to match our diaries and I thus have much less flexibility than I would otherwise.
Case in point: tomorrow I agreed an all day exterior shoot with my client, who wants to be on site, but now the weather picture has changed and I will likely need to return the following day to do another three or four hours.
Would others just absorb this cost of time (and also money because of changed travel plans) or be upfront with the client and seek to charge for another few hours or half day?
Any input gratefully received!
Thanks
Joe
-
I'm working with ad agencies on shoots that would require weather days. We negotiate this up front, but everyone understands delayed days = people get paid. On a recent job that got pushed twice, we negotaited that nobody got paid if it got pushed 72-hours out, 24-72 hours, everyone got paid a half day fee, under 24-hours, everyone got a full fee. I got flat rates (I combine day rate plus usage typically).
I can't ask my assistants (who assist multiple people) and stylists to hold days, get rained out and not get paid.
-
Thanks Doug. Seems I need to get better about having these conversations. That structure of more than three days out // three days out // 1 day out seems very reasonable
I would also still be interested to hear from anyone else specifically working with architectural clients. For example, might changeable weather just be considered par for the course in this area?
-
I think this potentially applies to any kind of outdoor location shoot for which a particular type of weather conditions apply. It seems to me that half the photographic day rate for weather/travel days, plus any non-recoverable expenses, is fairly standard as a base. If you can negotiate more, even better.
-
I shoot primarily architectural photography. At the moment, I generally do the cancellation scaling as mentioned above with 72 hours, 48, 24, day of, as well. My fees are paid if this was due to client issues or problems not related to me. And expenses get paid no matter what...so assistants, stylists, rentals, etc... On the architectural stuff however, I rarely charge because of weather. Neither I nor the client can control that, and I certainly don’t want to deliver shots that don’t live up to my quality nor meet the needs of my client. If it rains or snows, we delay if possible. The client understands though that we are then on standby based on my schedule as well. They are still locked in and need to allow me the chance to still shoot. I don’t let them off the hook either. Sometimes we just concede and shoot anyways if we can get away with it and then drop in a new sky for instance assuming the rest of the shot still has some decent contrast and tones.