First paid product job and I said a day without thinking hard about it. It is 40 small items, mostly rings and pendants, two angles each, client wants a clean white background and files sized for their shop. I have one speedlight, a light tent, a tripod and a macro lens. Where does the time actually go on a job like this, and is a day laughable?
Get the delivery spec before you shoot anything, because it decides your whole workflow. Exact pixel dimensions, whether the background must be pure white or just look white, whether they want a shadow, and what file format their shop wants. I once reshot a set because pure white in their system meant something specific and mine was a very slightly grey studio white.
I have done this both ways and the difference is enormous. Tethered, with a locked camera, fixed lighting and a template crop, adds maybe an hour to the shoot and cuts editing to a batch job plus spot work. Shooting handheld and fixing alignment and exposure later feels faster on the day and then costs you three times as long at the desk. For a repeatable catalogue job the setup time is the cheapest hour you will spend.
Politely, this is not a product photography quote, it is a macro and reflective surfaces quote. Flat lay clothing and boxes are the job people mean when they say forty items in a day, and jewellery is a different discipline with different rates. Price it per image with retouching stated separately, and the conversation about how long it takes solves itself.
Reflective work is quoted separately everywhere I have seen it. Watches, glassware and jewellery are all per image for exactly this reason.
Per image also gives me a way to renegotiate without reopening the entire quote, which is the escape hatch I currently do not have.
Per image, two revisions included, retouching priced separately. Day rates on catalogue work only ever benefit the client.
Shoot five pieces first, edit them fully, deliver those and get sign off before touching the other 35. Costs you an hour and protects you from redoing 80 images to somebody's unstated taste.
@question_jar · 4w ago · 3 replies
Shooting is not the slow part. Once the set is locked and you are tethered with a fixed frame, I move at roughly eight to twelve items an hour including styling, so 40 items at two angles is a long but survivable day of shooting on its own. The problem is that jewellery is reflective and tiny, so every piece needs positioning with putty, dust removal and often a second exposure for the stone, and my editing time on that kind of work has never been under four or five minutes an image. Forty items, eighty images, that is a second day minimum.
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@nadia_brill · 4w ago
Eighty images at five minutes is nearly seven hours of retouching alone. I quoted a day for the whole job.
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@lowell_frame · 4w ago
And dust is worse on jewellery than on anything else. Blow everything down before each shot or you will pay for it frame by frame later.
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