Charging for Travel
Charging for Travel
Should you charge for travel or not? It's a great discussion and there are many threads on forums. It's a question that people ask me regularly.
In the 1980s, I never charged for travel, but in 1991, I was at a customer downtown, when I received a phone call from Gerry, one of my "flux"1 client. They needed a quick portrait for one of their financial advisor. I was already downtown, only a 15 minute walk with the lights... "I should be there in an hour".
I arrived, went the board room, set my lights, used a secretary2 to check the shadows, lights... 20 minutes3. The financial advisor came in, half a dozen photos. I started packing up, Gerry walked in:
Here's your cheque and send us the negatives.
$23 and 75 cents. To this day, I still don't know how he calculated that amount, I think that it was for my time. But, I was dumb founded, looked at the cheque and had the presence of mind of crumpling it and throwing it on the ground in front of Gerry. I finished packing up and left. Since I knew people there, I meet one of them later for coffee and found out that Gerry boasted that either his cousin or nephew, I can't remember which one, was such a better photographer...
Since then I charge a "travel charge" to all my customers, unless they are on a yearly contract, a multiple photo shoots contract or a fixed price "package". The travel charge depends on how far and how long, they range from $45 to as much as $800 + expenses.
- After all these years, almost nobody asked me to reduce or cancel my travel charges.
- A couple of times, I have given "free travel" instead of giving them discounts on the photo shoot.
- The travel charges are shown clearly as a separate line item on the invoice.
- The travel charges add up to such a significant part of my income, that I keep track of the travel charges separately in the accounting.
1 Client going through a major change process, usually my contact has changed and there is somebody new replacing him/her. ↑
2 At that time, they still had secretaries ↑
3 This is a well oiled machine ↑
Charging for Travel
Should you charge for travel or not? It's a great discussion and there are many threads on forums. It's a question that people ask me regularly.
In the 1980s, I never charged for travel, but in 1991, I was at a customer downtown, when I received a phone call from Gerry, one of my "flux"1 client. They needed a quick portrait for one of their financial advisor. I was already downtown, only a 15 minute walk with the lights... "I should be there in an hour".
I arrived, went the board room, set my lights, used a secretary2 to check the shadows, lights... 20 minutes3. The financial advisor came in, half a dozen photos. I started packing up, Gerry walked in:
Here's your cheque and send us the negatives.
$23 and 75 cents. To this day, I still don't know how he calculated that amount, I think that it was for my time. But, I was dumb founded, looked at the cheque and had the presence of mind of crumpling it and throwing it on the ground in front of Gerry. I finished packing up and left. Since I knew people there, I meet one of them later for coffee and found out that Gerry boasted that either his cousin or nephew, I can't remember which one, was such a better photographer...
Since then I charge a "travel charge" to all my customers, unless they are on a yearly contract, a multiple photo shoots contract or a fixed price "package". The travel charge depends on how far and how long, they range from $45 to as much as $800 + expenses.
- After all these years, almost nobody asked me to reduce or cancel my travel charges.
- A couple of times, I have given "free travel" instead of giving them discounts on the photo shoot.
- The travel charges are shown clearly as a separate line item on the invoice.
- The travel charges add up to such a significant part of my income, that I keep track of the travel charges separately in the accounting.
1 Client going through a major change process, usually my contact has changed and there is somebody new replacing him/her. ↑
2 At that time, they still had secretaries ↑
3 This is a well oiled machine ↑
