Sitting fees

I rarely post anything here but photos and studio happenings. I want to talk about sitting fees, and since it's directly related to Madchen Studios I think it belongs here. You will find sitting fees at most portrait studios. Why do we have this weird fee some may ask. This fee includes a ton of different elements in getting you to the studio to posting your photos on your gallery. The studio fee session includes;
1. The initial phone consultation (advice about backgrounds and clothing choices)
2. Setting up the studio for your session. (every session in completely unique and I try to get everything ready before you come.) Typically the hour before you come I spend setting up lights, putting up the appropriate backdrop, making sure that the props we need are all ready to go, and doing test shots.
3. The time spent shooting. Generally this is only an hour, but sometimes it happily runs over.
4. Clean up of props and backgrounds. (lol...sometimes we have little ones who pee on the props, those definately need to be washed!) Seriously though, all of my toys, blankets and backgrounds are cleaned after every use.
5. Unloading and indexing the photos onto the computer.
6. Backing up the session's raw file to an external hard drive and burn it all to disk as well
7. Going through all of the photos, taking out the "blinky" eyes and weird expressions as well
8. Making minor adjustments to photos
9. Developing each photo into an image. (because I shoot raw I go through each photo individually and convert it into a tiff or jpeg image after making some adjustments.
10. Fully photoshoping a few selected images so that they are remastered for colour and clarity.
11. Loading everything into an online gallery
12. Customizing your online gallery (everyones password is different!)
13. An email or phone call letting you know that your gallery is ready for viewing
14. All consultations and advice about your ordering process.

Suddenly the $60.00 sitting fee looks super reasonable! Honestly, I love doing it and I love the entire process especially when my clients get exactly what they are looking for in their photos and their photographer.

I just want to remind my clients that the sitting fees are due at the time of the session. IF not, I do all the above work for free and that doesn't seem to be the right way to run a business.

These are my kids letting me test some lighting on them. Note the dirty knees, faces and the fake hey I like you smiles!


and then my hubby allowing me to test some things on him.