Extra hours with digital

[John_Banister]

I do not get paid for creating photographic images. But, when I read the words of people in medium format
digital whose jobs are consuming their lives, it sounds somewhat familiar. Sometimes when an employer
decides they like my work, they come up with more and stuff they want to add to my job description. I
usually let this go on for a while and then ask for more money to go with the extra work, and either get
it or move on to the next employer. It sounds to me like your customers have used the advent of digital
to convince y'all to provide a larger number of high quality images in the same amount of time for the same amount of
money. If this is true, has digital photography really made your talent so easily replaceable that you
need to work so many extra hours to provide for your families?

[SteveBurtless]

Hi. I think it can work both ways whether shooting film or digital. For me, I am much faster and able to deliver completed images digitally than I used to with film. Get a completed CD to a client within 48 hrs to a week if no rush. With film, there was dropping off the film to the lab, picking it up, having it drum scanned or scanning it myself. Then opening the images in Photoshop and starting the editing work. With digital, most of the extra steps taken with film are eliminated. When a client looks at the image on computer or a print and says, "this is digital?" Wow! The quality is there. Film still has its place, however after working with digital for so long, there is no turning back or reason for me to shoot film, other than for creative reasons. If I was shooting hirez images for a billboard or the Grand Canyon, I would use film. I still spend a lot of time processing in photoshop, but using actions and additional automation techniques, I feel I am actually saving precious time. Of course the time I spent learning all this computer stuff took a pace. Some high end digital photographers have assistants that take care of a lot of the post processing. I understand your concern though. Just my $$ steveb

[John_Banister]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I can see how doing completely digital work would be a time saver over doing hybrid work. I suppose if you can apply the same post processing to a series of images in an automated fashion then it doesn't take so much time to provide more images.

[Mike_Guilbault]

Which is exactly why we need to get away from day/hourly rates for pricing. Because we can deliver more in the same time period, if we only charge by the hour, we are loosing $$ just because we are more efficient. We should be charging more for the increased productivity.

[John_Banister]

Charging by the image with a per-image discount for groups of similar images makes sense to me. What I seem to have been reading is that people charge by the job, but the scope of what the job is has grown much faster than the rate.

[JeffRogers]

I may be working more hours with digital but I am delivering a better product and appreciate the greater control that I have over the output.