Commercial stills · Milwaukee, WI · Estimating for Q4. Two shoot days a week.
You are not buying photographs. You are buying permission.
A two-person commercial stills studio in Milwaukee. Every quote in this trade is a licence, not a set of pictures — so the calculator below is the actual pricing model, with all twenty-seven combinations on the page.
The licence
Three variables, and they multiply.
A licence fee is separate from the shoot. It is calculated from three things and they multiply rather than add, which is why extending all three at once moves the number so far. Every combination below is a real quote we would honour.
Exclusivity is a fourth variable and it is not on this calculator, because it is priced per project. It stops us licensing the same frames to anyone else for the term, so it costs roughly what the rest of the licence costs again.
Where an estimate goes
The day rate is not the job.
A client sees a day rate and expects the estimate to be the day rate. Here is a two-day product shoot, itemised, with the licence stripped out so the production costs stand on their own. The creative fee is the largest single line and it is still a minority of the total.
- Creative fee, 2 shoot days $4,800 The part everybody pictures when they hear “day rate”.
- Pre-production, 1.5 days $1,200 Treatment, shot list, sample wrangling, scheduling. Skipping it is how shoot days overrun.
- Digital tech and assisting $1,100 Two people. One shoots, one keeps the files alive and the set moving.
- Studio hire, 2 days $1,400 Daylight studio with a cyc wall. Cheaper on location, and location has its own costs.
- Kit and grip hire $650 What we do not own. Honest line: some studios bury this in the day rate.
- Props and surfaces $480 Bought, and yours afterwards if you want them.
- Retouching, 24 finals $1,900 Roughly 40 minutes a frame. This is the line clients cut and then regret.
$11,530 of production. The creative fee is 42% of it.
None of the above is a licence. The licence is the calculator above and it is quoted separately, every time, so you can see which half of the number you are moving.
Work
Captioned with the licence, not the client.
Each caption is the licence that was actually bought, which is a more useful thing to show a prospective client than the client’s name.
Terms worth reading twice
Including the ones that are not in our favour.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Copyright | Stays with us unless it is assigned in writing. That is the default under US law and it is true of every photographer you will brief, whether or not they raise it. |
| Assignment | Buying the copyright outright is possible and is a separate transaction with its own price. Most clients do not need it and are quoted for it because they asked using the wrong word. |
| The term starts | At first use, not at delivery. Sitting on the files for eight months does not shorten your licence. |
| Renewal | Quoted at the same rate as the original licence, not at a penalty. A renewal is not a hostage situation and we will remind you before it lapses. |
| Overrun | A shoot day is ten hours including set-up. Beyond that it is $340 an hour and we will tell you at hour nine, not on the invoice. |
| Cancellation | Free up to 14 days out. Inside 14 days it is 50%, inside 48 hours it is 100% — because the studio, the crew and the day are already committed. |
Common questions
Before you brief.
Why not just sell us the pictures?
We can — that is an assignment, and it is quoted separately. It is usually several times the licence, and in nine cases out of ten the client wanted a broad licence rather than ownership and used the word “buy” because it is the normal word.
The calculator gives a bigger number than I expected.
Then narrow a variable. The most common overspend in this trade is buying perpetual worldwide all-media for a campaign that runs for one season on a website. Buy what you will use and renew if you are wrong.
Can we use the outtakes?
Not under the licence, which covers delivered finals. If you want the wider selection licensed, say so before the shoot and it costs very little; asking afterwards costs more because the frames have to be finished.
Do you work to a client’s art direction?
Gladly, and it usually makes the shoot faster. Bring a deck, a layout or even a scribble. What slows a day down is not strong direction, it is no direction discovered at 10am.
Who owns the props and surfaces?
You do, if the estimate has a props line on it and you paid it. We will box them up. Studios that keep them are recharging you for the same marble slab every quarter.
What if we hate the results?
You will see frames on set as we go, so it should never get that far. If it does, we reshoot once at cost — you cover the studio and crew, we waive the creative fee.
Brief us
Tell us the usage first.
Where it runs and for how long decides more of the number than the shoot does. Fields marked with an asterisk are required.