Family Portaits

Looking for a bit of help here, my brother is a photographer in Berlin and he's considering coming home and starting a family portrait business. Has anyone here ever got it done or looking to get it done? How much did you think it would cost and how much it actually cost? Did you think it was good value or a rip off? We've been monitoring the daily deals available through various sites and being honest even at deal prices I would consider the price a disgrace.

Any help appreciated,

 

A mate of mine is a photographer who got into it. Its a very very hard business at the moment. 4 or 5 years ago, people were making a fortune, charging mad money so he tried to get in at the tail end of that.

I remember getting a voucher for a place to get one free session and a half price photo. The session went very well and we went back to look at the photos a few weeks later. We ended up only taking the half price photo as the rest of them were scandalous prices, just off the wall, would have needed a loan to get them. The arrogant fool who was trying to sell to us was lucky I didn't deck him.

It's actually very suprising the actual cost to the photographer in terms of time spent touching up the work, printing, lighting, lenses etc. My mate still does it a bit on the side, but does it more as hobby as even if he gets the work (and its still expensive to the customer), he is lucky to break even.

I suppose if your brother is good enough and has contacts, he could do well, but I know the last thing a lot of families will be thinking about spending a few K on is family portraits.

 

I brought the missus and chizzlers to a local hotel for Mother's day recently. The hotel had done a deal with a local photographer that a family portrait was included in the price of the meal...While the initial portrait seemed to be a loss leader he seemed to be doing ok in follow up and extra prints...

 

A few K?

Does it seriously cost that kind of money for a family portrait?

 

Went and done some photo session with the family about 2 years ago. Got some roped in to some deal for 35eur where you got a 45 min photo shoot and a free 4x6 photo. when we went back to view the photos, they were literally looking for k's for the other prints and frames. I laughed my way out of the place.

 

Sorry I was talking about where you go and spend about an hour with a photographer. He/she could take 50 shots, then go off spend a week touching up the best 10. You then choose which ones you want, what formats/sizes/frames. For one photo it would not be that price, but they want ya to buy more than one, so I would say anything over 3 or over would more than 1k.

 

Was it based in swords by any chance?

 

Thanks for the replies lads, all the stories above are all to familiar. The offer I seen today was an hour session with 1 pic for €25. Extra pics were €160 unframed and €260 framed. Whatever about the time spent touching up etc but €100 for a 16x12 frame that you could get yourself for less than a tenner is scandalous.

I should have mentioned earlier than it was more the mother/baby market he was thinking off. The prices he's thinking of are low hundreds rather than thousands with no stupid gimmicks like holding on to the pics like most photographers do, extra frames would be in the €20-40 frame depending on size.

 

it was indeed

 

We used PixiFoto recently for our 3 month old which was a free session and one free 8x10 and they did family shots as well.

Their package was 12 sets of photos for €375 which was 12 photos that you got a 10x8, a 5x7 and 4 wallet sized versions off and a CD with the 12 photos on them if you want to re-print them yourself and its the best 12 from the session they use.

We took 8 of the sets for €225 as for our first born we figured we'd take the hit and thought it was expenses but based on what Im reading here its actually a good deal they do.

 

A few year ago we got 7 photos 10 x 8 prints in black and white of the family costing 600 euro the studio time was free. He didnt make a bob it nearly took 2 days to get the shots of the kids but it was worth it when anyone sees them they ask where we got them done. If your brother was able to get rare or quirky photos then people will use him also he will need the patience of jobe to handle the kids photos.