Saving Money on Your Photography

With today's economy, savings money is forefront of everyone's minds. It is easy to think putting off on marketing efforts, including photographing your projects, but when things are slow is the exact time you should be ramping up your marketing.

There are all sorts of ways to reduce the financial impact of photographing your projects:

- Share the Cost with Others. If you feel a building is worth photographing, your general contractor, vendors, interior designers, and even the building owner or occupant probably feel the same way. Here at R2 we encourage you to talk with other participants in a project and have the jointly commission the photography with you. When you do that, we divide your creative fees and expenses equally between the commissioning parties. Suddenly you have reduced those line items of the shoot by half, two thirds, etc. A signifiant savings. The only aspect of the shoot that is not split among participants is the usage fee. That is because each participant probably has different uses for the images. While one firm would want the images for web sites, corporate brochures, etc. another may want to use them in advertising.

- Plan Ahead, Be Flexible. The more flexibility you have in your shooting schedules and deadlines, the more inexpensive your project can be. If we are able to combine travel expenses with another project, both projects share in the savings. The more time we have to fit the project into our schedule, we also extend savings to our clients. Rush jobs, or quick turn around projects are exponentially more expensive.

- Shop Locally. By utilizing local talent for your photography needs, you're significantly reducing the travel costs for a project, pure and simple. It is an amazing phenomenon that out of town photographers are so much higher regarded, just because they are from "out of town." But, they are local to somewhere, so, there is a pretty good chance you have extremely talented photographers right nearby.

- Prioritize Views / Use Fewer Views. This is the toughest way to save on the costs of photography, you really want 10 images documenting all the features of the design in a structure, but your budget just can't absorb that many images. But reducing the number of images can save you across the board with photographer time on site, post production, usage fees on all the images.

- Multiple Projects. This can be a great way, with one caveat, be prepared to contract for the projects all at the same time. Here at R2 Photography we are thrilled to secure multiple projects with a client, and offer a discount on all the projects. The projects do not have to be shot one right after the other, but just have the projects on the books and the contracts signed. The reason we insist on all the projects being contracted at the same time, is, just like nearly every other photography firm on the planet, we have heard, "if you give us a discount on this first project, we will use you again on this one coming up" and… nothing happens with the second project. 

Whether we are your photographer or not, if you have any questions or comments about commissioning architectural photography, please feel free to drop us a line anytime. We'd be happy to help!

Kimberly Blom-Roemer
Architectural and Aerial Photographer
R2 Photography, LLC
r2-photography.com
866-722-9506