[00:00:00] Last year, my production company had a lifestyle photo shoot with a photographer of a videographer, three models and one assistant. This episode is talking about how I plan the day, the cost breakdowns, and how you can land five figure deals like this too. Welcome to the Creative Biz Launch Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale to six figures.
Whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer, you'll find something of value here. If this is your first time here, my name is Chris Pieta. I run production company and teach creative business online through my education company, creative Biz Launch. Typically, I stick to product photography, but today we're switching things up and talking about how lifestyle photography.
Also works inside of my business. We'll focus on the business side of this photo shoot and break down how I hire talent and how much the day costs my company to produce the best photos possible and videos possible for the client, and how I priced this so that I made over five figures from this shoot.
If you've been listening to any of my episodes for some time now, you [00:01:00] know, I say you should always niche down. The more specific you can get with your niche, the more money you can make. My niche is food and beverage proc photography, and that's a ways away from a lifestyle shoot. So why did I offer it?
Truth is I didn't, the client asked me. Now if you've been listening for some time now, you know that I say that clients don't come to you. You have to be the one to reach out to clients. Let me explain what's going on here because this may be a little confusing. This client is one of my product photography clients.
I've been working with them for a few years now. Initially, I called, emailed them a few years back and we booked a discovery call. They signed a product photography proposal, and we've been doing product photography projects together ever. Now they've asked me to do a lifestyle photography shoot. They asked me what my lifestyle photography capabilities were.
Well, for the past three years, I've only been doing product photography, but before then, I actually was doing a lot of lifestyle shoots, photographing models in the streets of Chicago and other things was what I [00:02:00] did when. Learning how to do photography on the weekends. Back when I was still working my nine to five, I just didn't have a business for this at the time, so I switched over to Prag Photography.
That's how I would make my money. Now, fast forward three years later and a client is asking me if I'm able to do lifestyle photography. Those skills that I learned years back came right to the surface and I gave them a fat yes.
My website portfolio is all product photography though, so I had to create a new portfolio that only this client would be able to see, and I showed them my lifestyle capabilities. They saw the portfolio, loved it, and signed on for a lifestyle photo shoot. I was back to photographing people. I had a signature from the client, so the project was good to go.
Next was planning all the logistics for the day. This was going to be a full day shoot typically for f. Typically for product photography, I just shoot things in my studio at my own pace. Now, let's say you're not like me and you've had very little experience photographing models or working with lifestyle photography.
The [00:03:00] client asks you to do lifestyle photography and they have five or 10 grand. As a budget, that's a lot of money. Do you walk away and leave the money on the table or do you say, yes, you can do it even though you're not 100% competent? I would actually lean towards the ladder. If you're a competent photographer, you can quickly learn this new style of photography.
You've got a lot of money writing on this, right? Go on YouTube, watch a few videos on posing. Call up your friends dm some beginner models on Instagram and practice before you need to actually shoot. Get good before the shoot day. You manage to learn one genre of photography. You can learn this new one as.
I will always try and help my clients as much as I can with my own skillset and if I don't know something, I learn it. By the way, if you wanna learn how to land five figure deals like this, you should enroll inside of my free training down below. It's a 60 minute workshop that teaches you how to get paying clients.
Link for that is in the show notes. Now, this photo shoot needed to be planned out. I needed models, a videographer, and I needed a beautiful [00:04:00] location. Keep listening because at the end of this video, I'm gonna break down how much money I actually made from all this. If you failed to prepare, you prepared to fail.
That's how that quote goes, right? This date needed a lot of preparation. I've actually never done a photo shoot at this scale before, so I needed a. I needed to be able to run through the day in my head, and I had to know exactly what was happening. Let's start with the assets the client needed.
The goal of the project was to create beautiful lifestyle photography for the launch of their new product line. They needed a lot of photos. Now, I don't wanna use the exact number's because I don't feel comfortable telling. Exactly what my assets were that the client paid for, but here's some good estimates.
So in terms of actual photos, the contract was for about a hundred lifestyle photos and 20 product photos added on. We are going to use three different models, two female, one male. They'd have multiple outfits on throughout the day since they were so many photos. The client also wanted to have multiple locations.
This [00:05:00] was going to be challeng. We were gonna be working with around 20 or so products for the shoot at the last minute. The client also wanted to add on some video into the contract. This was gonna be a busy day. I was trying to figure out how I was going to shoot all these photos and videos during the day, and then I remembered I run a production company.
It's not my job to do all the work. My role is to get the client the final assets that they need. That's why they hired me. So I coordinate with a videographer hired. And figure it out that we'd be able to shoot simultaneously throughout the day. With that in mind, it's time to talk about how I coordinate this shoot.
So we already have a videographer. That's great. Next up the photographer. Well, that's me. I handled all the photography for the shoot. I set the lighting, I directed the models. I took control of the lifestyle photography element. But what is a lifestyle shoe without any models. I had to get three models for.
A lot of the times photographers will just hire friends to model, but I want to do this right? I want to get professional models. So I went [00:06:00] and found some professional models I posted on my Instagram story asking for models between a certain age and demographic, and I didn't really get much engagement with that story.
Luckily, a former coworker of mine has been pursuing modeling for some time now, so I hit him up with what I needed. I told him I needed three models, two females, one male, and a few hours later he. Now, this was my first time working with professional models, so I wasn't sure what was gonna happen here. As soon as they agreed to work with me over text, I had to get it in writing.
I had to do the same thing I do with my clients. I had to get a proposal together, so I put together a short contract and Panda Doc sent it to them and had them sign. I did why I always doing the situation. I went to Google, found some contracts, I used, other contracts I've seen, and I've built out my own terms.
I just used some common sense here sent. I sent out those contracts, the model signed, I paid them their deposits, and that was taken care of. All right, so we got one videographer, one photographer, three models. What are we missing here? An assistant. This was going to be a [00:07:00] crazy day, so I needed some help.
My girlfriend, Kayla, agreed to help assist during the day, so we had our team, a team of seven, creating some incredible lifestyle photos. Keep in mind, I've never assembled a team like this before. How was. How was I gonna make sure that everything went smoothly? First off, I was clear in all my communications with the team.
I told them exactly what time to show up and where I told them everything they needed to bring, what outfits they needed, what gear they needed. I didn't miss any details. Having a plan is so important in these situations. It's the difference between a failed project and a successful project. Okay, so we're almost ready for the.
What are we missing? The location. I wanted a really versatile space for this. I was hoping to rent a huge apartment with unique rooms for the shoot. I went to Airbnb, but I heard that some of the hosts don't want photo shoots happening, and some even charge an extra licensing fee for their photos. I turned to a different website, pure Space.
Pure Space is basically an Airbnb for venues. It's designed for this exact purpose. After looking through their options [00:08:00] for a while, I found this great spot, Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. It had tons of natural light plants, a huge kitchen, huge living space, and furnished bedrooms perfect for every aspect of this project.
I messaged the host and rented it for. It cost a pretty penny to rent, but I'll get into the breakdown of the cost in a little bit here. I'll be talking about how much money I made at the end of this video, so stay tuned for that. All right, so we had the models and the team assembled. We had the space, we had the products.
The shoot day was rapidly approaching, and I was excited.
When shoot day came around, it didn't go exactly as planned. On shoot day, I got there an hour early, scoured out the location and had an idea of what I wanted to do. Kayla helped me set food and drinks for the models, and I helped prepare all the products so they were ready to shoot. Rob came later, helps up some lights and got all his gear in order.
I was still missing one product from the client. They said they were gonna overnight to me to the shoot location, and they did, but I never got the product. They overnighted it to me because I had to have it that day, but UPS didn't deliver it. [00:09:00] Apparently when you overnight something, you need to sign for it.
I missed UPS at the door that morning and they just left with the product. A little rant here. It's a terrible policy on UPS's end here. If you overnight something, that means you need it. A signature requirement ruins this because if you miss a delivery window, you don't get the product overnight.
Overnight shipment should not have that requirement anyways. We ended up photoshopping the product into the scene later and all was fine. At this point, everyone's arrived except one of the models. No one can get ahold of her, and I'm getting a little worried because we need her for these photos. I already paid a lot money for the location and if she doesn't show up, I'm screwed here.
I started photographing the other two models and all the photos of them that. Eventually the third mile, text me back saying she just woke up and slept through her alarm. She's on the way and I breathe a sign of relief and continue on with the. Since we have videographer, I coordinate shooting schedules with him.
While I was photographing one model, he was doing a video of the other model in a different room. Now that's efficiency. Fast forward five hours later and the shoot wraps up. [00:10:00] I got all the photos I need of all the models, and for the most part, everything went according to plan. At the very end of the day when everyone was going home, I stopped everyone and asked to talk with them one-on-one.
I simply asked, is there anything I could have done better during the shoot? I want constructive feedback here. This was my first shoot at the scale, so I wanted to get better. Everyone said they had a great time and they loved working with me. No one had any constructive feedback except one of the models.
She mentioned that I needed to be a bit more playful with her during the shoot. She'd prefer if I cracked a few jokes during the shoot, stuff like that. So I knew that next time around I had to be a little less serious and more playful with the shoot. I'm glad she told me this because I didn't realize it myself.
I was just so focused on making sure that the day went well. I didn't think I came off as serious. It's great to know this because it gives me something to work on. If you find yourself working with other people, always ask what you could do. Do better. That's how we grow. A lot of the time we don't see these things ourselves and we need other people to pointed out.
Anyways, I went home, [00:11:00] sorted through the photos, sent them to my editor, and that was a wrap. Now let's talk dollar sign. I've been struggling to think of a way to talk about this part because I don't want to use the exact numbers that my client paid me because I don't wanna reveal information that people wouldn't want me to reveal.
So I'll use real numbers, but they're gonna be scaled from what the actual numbers are. What I can tell you is the shoot was over $10,000 in revenue. That's real. Now let's talk about my cost breakdown in a scaled. I'm talking the actual numbers and multiplying them by a percentage, so this can be either more or less than the real number.
Maybe in a future episode I'll try and get you guys something more accurate, but here we go. First off, let's say that the client paid me 15,000 for the shoot. I had a lot of fees going into this. Each model charged five 50 for their time. Next, for the videographer, he charged me 800 for the videos. Very fair price and really great results.
From that, the space was actually the most expensive cost. It was $1,200 for the whole day. It was a pretty penny, but it was definitely worth it for the end [00:12:00] result. Finally, my editor took a big chunk. I paid her 500 bucks for over 100 photos, which is relatively cheap. If you think. She's a really great team member.
I've been working with her for years now. And a side note, if you're making any money from photography, go and find yourself an editor. They'll make you way more money in the long term than if you were to edit all the photos yourself. Okay, so if we add up all these expenses and subtract from our actual revenue, that leaves us with $10,850 of profit.
Now, again, these are scaled numbers, but as a percentage chunk, this is going to be a 72% percent profit. Now, that's the real profit that I made from the shoot. It was a 28%, uh, fee for all of the expenses here. So this is Essent. A few days work for 10 grand. Now that's pretty good. Now, if you don't have a client yet like this, go and enroll in the course Below.
That is how you get your first clients, your first paying clients. That is all I have [00:13:00] today. My name is Chris Peta, and thank you so much for listening. I.
