[dragonfly]

I spent three days in Golden Gate Park at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. I photographed more than a dozen bands in addition to my friends.

The artists are starting to get tagged on my album, and I received this message today from the leader of one of the bands:

The shot you posted of me is amazing. Can I get high res of all the shots you took of our band? I'm happy to pay whatever you think is the right amount. Thanks.

Roger

It's only about 40 photos, some of them are really good. I need some advice about how to respond to the request.

[cwood]

if it were me...

if it is a no-name band with no budget and no marketing.. $20 per digital image
if it is a known band with potential to market using your photos... $50 per digital image

Maybe you could get more or maybe they won't even pay that much. But it is a opportunitistic encounter - I would not get greedy about it. If they use your picture on a CD cover and they become the next Nirvana then you get to say "I knew them when..."

[brofkand]

Realistically, they'll probably only ever use them for the band website, maybe some other stuff.

I'd license the images for web-only use at $20 each. (I think cwood is on point with pricing)

If they wanted print licenses (for ads in the paper, fliers for gigs, etc.), I'd say $50 per image used.

These licenses are stackable. So if the band wants to post the image on their website and put it on a flier, then the fee is $70.

Your choice if these licenses are perpetual or annual or whatever. I'd go with perpetual if they're a small-town gig.

There are a few sites online where you can download sample licenses. I'd have something written up so in the unlikely event that the licenses are infringed upon or the bill is noncollectable, you have a contract to fall back on.

Maybe I'm over thinking this.

[FullertonImages]

Prices sounds pretty fair, just make sure not to give away too much. You want to be very specific about what they can and cant do with the images you give them. You don't want to just say "here is hi-res and lo-res for $70, have a nice life!". MAke sure that you say that rights are non-transferable, meaning that when blah-blah music magazine wants to run a story on them, the band can't just hand over your images to the mag. I would probably put in exclusiong in for album art or any other kind of long term printing. Flyers or posters or whatever aren't worth much, since they're so temporary, but album art, or if someone was making a book on something that involved them, then that's worth more than the $50 quoted above.

Most importantly, you want to build the relationship, have them respect your work, and to like you. The most likely real source of money that will come out of this is future work. You want it to be so that when they working on the next album, and thinking of a photo for the cover, they think, "Hey, let's call that photog who's shots we liked from a last year." Then you can make a decent fee of a cover shoot.