The second activity of the week was to produce an estimate.
“A small communications agency contacts you and would like you to give them an estimate. They are re-branding Broadgate, an area in London, and need 25 images to use for printed materials, social media, web, tube ads and potentially billboards. The license term is five years. They think you can do the shoot in two days.”
I know the Broadgate area very well as I have worked their for a significant part of my working life or travelled through it on my way to work. This could place me at an advantage to other photographers but equally means that you need to be careful to not just see the environment in the way you have seen it first opened in the 1980s as part of deregulation in the city aka “Big Bang”. The site is currently undergoing regeneration this year UBS moved into their new home at 5 Broadgate vacating: 100 Liverpool Street, 6 / 8 Broadgate and 1 / 2 Finsbury Avenue. The area to the East of Broadgate Sun Street is currently subject to redevelopment work creating a mix of office, a residential property. 100 Liverpool Street and 6/8 Broadgate are currently undergoing redevelopment and are due to re-open in 2019.
When quoting for this job I decided to treat it like a local shoot as my travel to London is already covered by a season ticket plus it was would be a significant part of my quote. The quote is based on the assumption that the client would want exterior and interior shoots of the space. My thought process was to shoot on one weekday and one weekend day. The week day would be used to capture images that would focus on the building interiors and market stalls that sell food and give the area a much more modern vide than it had in the 1980s. Broadgate can be as a transition between the hipster area of Shoreditch and the more tradition Square Mile (the pre big bang home for Brokers and Dealers on the merkets of London.)
The weekend day would be used to shoot exterior images of the building due to the lower volume of people walking through the space. My initial quote therefore did not include an assistant as typically I would approach this type of shoot asa single handed crew. I decide to separate usage from my time to establish a base cost with the client for image usage. As the requirement had not been specific I restricted the region to London only allowing for the option to renegotiate the usage costs if the client wants to use the images to attract overseas clients.
Included time for retouching of the images.
I included a quote for hiring equipment for the shoot based on hiring costs from TheFlashCentre (www.theflashcentre.co.uk) even though I have all of the equipment required for this shoot in my equipment store. This strategy means that if I had an equipment failure I could hire replacement items without eating into my contingency with the quote. Separating the costs out helps with negotiating with the client, as quoting a single all in price means they can try to apply an overall haircut to whole quote. With an itemised we can now negotiate on the inclusion or exclusion of specific costs if necessary.
After feedback from tutors and reflecting upon my own experience of shooting at weekends in London I added an assistant to the estimate.
Photo-Shoot-Estimate-Week8-2-revised
The most difficult task for this activity was establishing a baseline cost to quote against to ensure the final estimate was in an appropriate ballpark to allow a dialogue to take place with the agency.
Final consideration for this job is timing we are in November and that means Broadgate Estates will put up their Christmas decorations. To ensure that the images are not immediately dated the timing of the shoot might need to be altered to avoid that period. Weather is a final factor to consider and would be something to discuss with the client though being local means I could easily move the shoot schedule if there was adverse weather on the intended shoot dates.
