One days work, how much????

Why you should not work for free, while I'm at it why you should not work for next to nothing.

How much did your camera cost? £50, unlikely. £500 maybe. More? Quite possibly. A quick tip, you need more than one of those.

Add lenses, bags, flash, reflectors, triggers, memory, batteries and the list does go on and on and on.

How did you get to your client? If you walked great. Anything else just cost you money. Did you visit your client prior to the shoot, did you buy them a coffee, a piece of cake, lunch?

Did you advertise to get that client? Are you insured? Do you have an accountant and admin costs?

Do you process film or work on computers?, either way it is going to cost A LOT.

Website design and running costs, domain names. Storage costs for all those thousands of images you are going to need to back up.

Have you had training? How much time and money did that take?

Hang on a minute, we haven't even taken any photos yet!! A whole day at a wedding equals travel, a lot of photos and a lot of hard work, you could just hand over the files and say 'look I took a 1000 photos of your wedding' and they may think 'great, seems pretty good value'.

Or you could spend another two days fine tuning those 1000 photos down to maybe 300 creating a beautiful visual story, lovingly edited making everyone and every image look as amazing as possible. I wonder what your client may think then, who they might recommend you to, how much keener they may be to put those images into a stunning album.

The same goes for any shoot, it takes time getting it right and time as I think someone once said is money.

There will always be people willing to do things for free, the difference is you offer more, you offer an amazing service, you offer security, you offer amazing products and you are amazing at what you do.

Yes there should always be room for a little negotiation and it's always good to give your clients a little extra, but that's what it should be, a free add on product, an extra print, an extra hour of your time. Not the career that you have invested thousands of pounds and countless hours of your time given away for nothing.

One last thing. You may want to factor in feeding yourself, your family, buying a house, clothes, paying some bills, going on holiday and doing fun stuff. I'm pretty sure you are not going to be able to get those things for free.

Let the people shooting for free shoot for free, they will get some business but was it the business you really wanted and will they be around in 12 months still doing that? Don't bitch about them, use your energy cultivating an experience for your clients that will be the foundation of your business, it will be time very well invested.