How to charge for photos

[WCpilot]

Hey all, I'm going to be doing a couple shoots for my school's fall theater productions. I was wondering if you could help me out with pricing. The sessions will be 1 or 2 hours at the most. Then they want to buy all the rights to the photos so they can archive them and use them at will. The main purpose of this for me is portfolio building for a possible internship at an operahouse over the summer. With that in mind, I was thinking charge $30/hr, include 5 photos in the hourly cost, and then charge $10-$20 per photo after that. Is that expensive/cheap for this case, or too complicated? Any advice would be appreciated.

[WCpilot]

.....anyone?.....

[mjs1973]

Tuff question to answer... I would think it would depend a lot on your market. Have you thought of contacting other pros in your area to get their input? I have done that locally in the past. They might not be able to give you an exact amount to charge, but that can at least put you in the ballpark.

As far as giving them all the rights to the photos, I would make sure that I also kept my rights to use the photos for whatever I wanted. I would also charge more for giving them those rights than I would if I was doing something like a portrait shoot where I'm only charging a sitting fee, and for prints. For a portrait session, you're making your money off of the print sales, by giving them the rights to use the photos, you won't be making anything from prints as they will be able to print their own.