I recently broke one of my own golden rules and agreed to undertake a shoot as a favour to someone.
The arrangements for the pix to be taken were agreed subject to confirmation, no confirmation was recieved.
So the whole thing was then done on the hoof, last minute and hurried, not how I ever work as my approach is considered and well prepared.
To top it off some of the subjects of my pix were just plain rude !
I already knew that the larger the fee the more people value my service and appreciate my efforts and I also new that the opposite of this was also true.
If you work for free then in the eyes of many your service is worth nothing !
I will not make this mistake again.
Until the next exposure.... (at full rate, no favours)
Thats all good advice, especially the presentation and album part. I need to test out a few suppliers I think from my portrait portfolio - may not be weddings, but it will at least show potential clients what I can do and the kind of thing they might expect.
This is something I'm wrestling with at the moment - do I start doing wedding photography at a reduced or even zero rate (don't worry, I'm in Oz, not muscling in on your patch) to get my foot in the door, or do I just just take the bull by the horns and charge full whack from day one?
Its a tough one, as you (and a lot of others) say - does free mean no value? I've done quite a few events for friends as a favour, but always been clear that its not a pro job, they'll just get lots of nice photos on a best endeavours basis, and everyone's been happy. As soon as someone wants to take advantage, then they'll have to pay up..