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If you charge for travel time, what do you charge?
I just got pointed to a thread about when the clock starts when a model is being paid (MM facebook page linked to it). I've never really negotiated to be paid for travel time, though some photographers will pay me from the time they pick me up, if that is how I am getting to a location. (I give an hourly rate and since I am always on time, I've never had any arguments about it being for the time that our shoot was scheduled to start, to the point at which I am totally free to go.) Sometimes I'll be on public transit for a couple hours for a shoot, and I feel that I should get some sort of compensation for my time (I ask at least for bus fair, but that's not what I mean). Travelling takes not only time, but energy, patience, and competence. So how do you do it? Oct 10 12 01:33 am Link If and how much you charge for travel depends on your market and the job. In business, the baseline is 50% of regular rate, but is adjusted quite heavily depending on several factors. 1) What does your competition do? If no one else charges for travel, you will price yourself out of the market. 2) Can you compete with models local to the photographers that would allow you to charge a premium for travel? 3) What is the ROI of the job? Would you want to risk losing a large job because you charged for travel? These are all factors one should consider and there is certainly no one size fits all answer. Cheers, Sven Oct 10 12 05:54 am Link I have never had a model charge for travel time even though she drove 3 or 4 hours one way. Oct 10 12 07:19 am Link If the rate you're being offered for the job itself isn't worth your time travelling to do it, then don't accept the job. You won't find many people willing to pay for your time spent travelling - gas money, maybe, but not time. Just my $0.02 Ciao Stefano www.stefanobrunesci.com Oct 10 12 07:30 am Link Travel is usually compensated by expense, not time. Both parties usually have travel time to a location, unless you're shooting at a home studio. If you were charging a photographer for a 3 hour shoot and he/she had to travel 3 hours to work with you, would you then do the shoot for free because they're spending 3 hours traveling? I highly doubt it. The decision to travel is part of the decision to shoot. If you don't think it's worth your time then the shoot isn't a good idea. But some expenses are a cost of doing business and are not reimbursable. Travel time is one of them. Where is the line drawn? If you spend 2 hours applying makeup at home would you consider charging for Makeup Time? Oct 10 12 07:37 am Link dp thank you MM for the lovely glitches for the past week. Oct 10 12 07:37 am Link If the location is more then an hour and a half away I'll ask for gas money on top of what my rate is. Usually it's agreed between both of us that that is fine. It usually ends up being somewhere between $10-20. That and I usually always let the photographer decide how much gas money he/she is going to give me. I never offer up a price. I usually just say something like, "Would it be ok to throw in a little bit of gas money since the drive is far?" Oct 10 12 07:48 am Link Generally speaking (since every situation is different), I don't like to say "oh you're 12 hours away so I'm going to charge $5 for each hour I travel". Rather, I look at the project as a whole, and I take into consideration the travel expenses (bus ticket or what have you), how far away it is (inconvenience), how long the shoot is (my time I get paid for), etc etc. For example, say someone local to me wants to shoot for 2 hours, I may ask them for $85 for the whole shoot. But then someone down in Boston wants a two hour shoot - well, now I've got the bus ticket expense, and then making the whole trip worth it since even though they only want to shoot for 2 hours I'm pretty much giving up an entire day or at least the better part of one. So I may ask for $150 for that shoot. Oct 10 12 08:20 am Link My basic rates are $100/hour, $350/half day and $600/day. (My hourly and day rates may be higher, depending on the job.) A travel day is charged at half of my day rate for that job, plus door-to-door expenses, i.e., from the time I walk out my door until I walk back in. This includes airfare, excess baggage (including equipment) fees, hotel, meals, tips and any other travel-related expense, plus equipment and props rental and any other fees (studio rental, location fees, models, MUA/hair, assistant, etc.) related to the shoot. If I'm traveling by car (more than 50 miles), I charge $1 per mile (plus any tolls) in lieu of airfare. This includes both my time for travel and gasoline. Oct 10 12 09:19 am Link I don't charge for travel time, but if the trip is a long I'll give a minimum shoot time of generally a half day or maybe even a full day if the trip is quite epic. I have charged a full day rate for shoots that have not really been an entire day's worth of shooting if the trip is long and restricted by train schedules or something. Oct 10 12 11:02 am Link V Laroche wrote: I drove a model 200 miles for a shoot on my property in northern Michigan. We had a half day shoot. Oct 10 12 11:09 am Link It is extremely rare to receive money for travel time, and not just travel expense. Take travel times into your negotiations, but don't try to put a price tag on them! Just know how long you'd be willing to travel for a certain amount of money. For example, I won't drive 2.5 hours for $100 but I do know I'd usually drive that far for $400. So if someone offers me a $300 shoot 2.5 hours away, that's questionable for me and I'd let the photographer know that I would prefer to drive that far for a halfday rate or more. If I ever felt entitled to collect an hourly fee for sitting on a plane for 16 hours at a time or driving cross-country, I would have found another job than modeling! Oct 10 12 01:12 pm Link If you want to be paid for your travel time, find out the whole amount of time, decide what you want to be paid for it, and then add it into your rate for the shoot itself. If you want to be paid 50 bucks for your travel and 200 bucks for your shooting, tell the photographer that youre charging 250 dollars. Dont say "well I have to travel 5 hours, and I want 10 bucks an hour for that, and then we're shooting for 2 hours, and I want 100 per hour for that, so the total will come to 250 dollars" If theyre asking you for your hourly, divide the travel cost and add it into the hourly shoot rate. If youre shooting two hours, and you want 250 total, then your hourly rate is "125", not "100 plus travel expenses". Oct 10 12 02:27 pm Link I had a model attempt to charge me for travel time to and from shoots...and I was the one that gave her a ride in my rental car. She claimed it was a major concession to give up an hour on each side of our shoot. I really think she was under the impression I was a chump and was trying to take advantage of me. And this was in Arizona where she lived. I was the one that had traveled across the country to work with her! My advice to models is to not mention the word travel or how much time it takes up. Just figure it into your rate. If can't negotiate without making a big deal about travel, then don't do the shoot. Oct 10 12 02:42 pm Link Jerry Nemeth wrote: It is wiser for model to up the rate so that all fees are included. It is a big turn off unless you are dealing with top tiers model agencies. Oct 10 12 03:00 pm Link I believe standard mileage is $.52? per mile in California, but I don't know many photographers who pay mileage like select clients do. You're not really missing out by not charging them for mileage or travel time.. asking might make you lose the gig. Oct 10 12 03:05 pm Link Ask any worker on a regular job if their boss will compensate for them to get to work ? During my days in production, if there is a meeting place for the crew, a crew call is set and the 1/2 fee starts.... If everybody is on their own, you get to work. If travel time is more than half a day, travel is done the day prior to the shoot. I am not saying this is what you should do but it used to bed the standard around here.... Good luck ! Jean Oct 10 12 03:11 pm Link JeanDphoto wrote: Their boss is probably not asking them to commute hours and hours both ways either. Someone living in baltimore might get an offer to work in philly on tuesday, then have a gig in DC on wednesday, and then NYC on thursday, then expected to hop on a 15+ hour bus ride to boston for the weekend. Those others are 1-3 hour trips in one direction. Its doable, I did it quite often, but not without adjusting my rates to make it worth it. What I charge someone only 10 minutes down the street from me wasnt always what I charged someone I had to travel 5+ hours for. Oct 10 12 03:35 pm Link Check with your tax preparer, but you may be able to deduct reasonable travel expenses from your taxes. In most states they allow for a standard milage if you keep detailed records. I find it a bit unreasonable to charge for time and milage. I will often refund a plane, bus or train ticket if I have agreed upon it before, but time and milage is not my concern... you either are willing or not. With that said... if you ask me for milage or time... I would probably consider it... just before I tell you it would be better to find someone else. Oct 10 12 03:44 pm Link You are totally right. When we hired people and had 3 or 4 hours of travel time, it would be on the day prior to shoot and pay 1/2 day rate. As for regular jobs I know may who have to stay stuck in traffic for 2 hours back and forth to get to work and I am sure their boss don't really give a damn :-( Laura UnBound wrote: Oct 10 12 04:00 pm Link Laura UnBound wrote: I commuted to NYC from wilmington for four years... I would take the train most days and drive maybe four times a month. My employer did not accept excuses for being late or if the weather was bad... I had to figure a way. Even if that entailed me booking a hotel room and staying over. Oct 10 12 04:08 pm Link Give a flat rate(hour, half day, whatever) and don't break it down. No one cares about how you got to that figure. Oct 10 12 04:09 pm Link -B-R-U-N-E-S-C-I- wrote: This. Oct 10 12 08:08 pm Link If a shoot requires a significant amount of travel, then I charge by half-day instead of hourly rates. No actual charge for travel time. Oct 11 12 11:48 am Link I stay in-state, unless I am already in another state for other reasons and have time to shoot, so can't speak for traveling models. I charge my normal flat hourly rate, which starts at the time I am requested to be on set. If it's more than a 20 mile drive each way, I will ask for gas money equivalent to the distance over that - I literally calculate it off gas prices and my car's gas mileage. I tried the flat rate thing with gas money included, but it's a mental thing for people - for some reason, $40/hr plus $10 for gas is okay, but $50/hr is not. Oct 11 12 12:33 pm Link As most of my paid jobs require me to travel to London, and I live 1-2 hours away from there, I don't charge extra for time spent travelling because I feel that if I tried to do this the client would simply pick one of the many hundreds of models that are actually based in London instead. You have to ask yourself if the amount of bookings you get would be likely to reduce if you started charging for your time spent travelling. It mainly depends on the competition present in the local area and how much they usually charge. Oct 11 12 12:35 pm Link For me it kind of depends on several things. If I'm paying $800.00 for a day's work then you can get here on your own. If it's a two hour shoot and you'll only making $200.00 then I can see kicking in for gas. But it's not my fault you live four hours away or you don't have a car or you don't have a driver's license. When I get hired for a job they'd throw my ass out if I added travel time. It's just something you have to figure in on whether it's worth it or not for you to take the assignment. If you travel for three hours, shoot for two, and travel back for three you are still making $200.00 a day which is pretty decent and a hell of a lot more than you'll get work a straight job. The only restriction that I have heard that I have to agree with is a model told me she had a four hour minimum. Her rationale was it took the same amount of time to get ready for a two hour shoot as a four hour shoot and also a two hour shoot kills half a day so why not get paid for it ? I didn't like the rationale but I had to agree with it. Oct 11 12 12:45 pm Link -B-R-U-N-E-S-C-I- wrote: I almost always offer gas money even for local models since I am 15 miles from downtown Houston. I do not pay for travel time as such but when I am bringing in a model specifically to shoot I pay for airfare and hotel expense. Oct 11 12 03:49 pm Link I only charge for time travel. Time traveled during time travel is insignificant when you are moving at the speed of light through multiple dimensions. Oct 11 12 05:10 pm Link I paid a model gas money after she picked me up at the hotel in Phoenix and drove us to our shoot location. Oct 12 12 04:03 am Link For TFP, I pay travel for distances up to 100km at the rate of 0.27 per km or half the value of a return rail-ticket. I don't even try to book llamas further away than that as the majority can't be bothered to spend time travelling over here in Europe. Some as close as 55km have complained that it's 'too far' to travel - that's a one hour train-ride on Germany's (pretty bloody good) rail service... For jobs a long way away (i.e. fly to Ibiza for a beach-shoot or something daft like that) then we'd negotiate a day-rate for everyone on the shoot starting from when we all met at the airport and finishing when we dispersed afterwards on return. Oct 12 12 05:19 am Link Selina Lee wrote: I've found this to be true as well. Oct 13 12 12:51 am Link Petrichor Rain wrote: It comes down to supply and demand, specifically for your services. That and what clients in your market are used to. Oct 13 12 02:41 pm Link RKD Photographic wrote: Ironically, I have the opposite problem. I can't get llamas who are CLOSE to shoot, as a rule. Until October, this year I had shot with one llama who lived within an hour of me, and I had six visits from llamas who live between 100 and 1200 miles away and who stayed anywhere from one to six days in the guest room. Oct 13 12 02:45 pm Link I would think a better question is "If you try to charge travel time how often do people skip you and hire the next model" Oct 13 12 02:48 pm Link JeanDphoto wrote: Models are NOT, as a rule, employees. They are independent contractors. Some contractors get travel compensation. Naturally, it's the ones who have some sort of leverage in the transaction. Oct 13 12 03:22 pm Link Stanley L Moore wrote: Assuming the llama lives in downtown Houston, that's one gallon, or $4.00. I'd be embarrassed to ask for $4 gas money for a paid job, and I'm broke. Oct 13 12 03:27 pm Link Art of the nude wrote: Usually models do not ask for gas $$$. Usually they are surprised and grateful. It makes for Goodwill. In most large cities in the south most people live in the suburbs. Oct 13 12 03:43 pm Link |
