Hangman - Prompt the students a few days in advance to go over their recent learning or research and pick out 5 new words associated with photography or art.
They're going to potentially use these words in a game of hangman where they take control of the lesson and play hangman with the rest of the class using their chosen new words.
Do this for around 15-20 mins trying to get a good cross section of the class involved presenting and interacting with the rest of the class.
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Cost/time sheets -
Hard-copy version - print out and distribute and explain the rationale.
1. Decide an hourly rate that you're going to work for... £50
2. Explain that - as soon as you start doing something that takes you away from your family and non-work activities - that is work and has to be charged for this includes
- Travelling to college (Like travelling to work)
- Researching and planning, thinking and figuring things out
- Getting resources sorted - even the time it takes to travel to the shops to buy props
- Phone calls and messaging
- Computer work - keeping records and working things out
- Doing things such as having to go to the shops to get food (if the client doesn't supply food)
Basically, every minute and hour you're working either at home or in your work-place you charge for it as much as you can.
3. So every hour you're in college, you charge £50, every hour you're travelling to and from college - if this was a work scenario, you'd charge for the travel time, so at any point if what you're doing in terms of your time, if it's connected to doing your project you charge for it.
What this will bring into focus if you think about it is - in a real situation (You working as a self-employed freelancer) you have to work fast and efficiently within self-determined time constraints. What you do when you quote for a job e.g. tell the client how much the job is going to cost, you have to factor all the time it's going to take and come up with a price that doesn't see you working for reduce rates...
As an example if your were asked to shoot some portraits for someone and you didn't think it through, you might just think... £50 an hour plus £20 for each of the prints... and quote them £150 for 5 prints. Job done - easy money!
Nearer the day, when you start to work things out and they've called you and said what they want specific things, you might then find yourself then realising that you need to start re-configuring your house (You don't have a studio at this point) to set up a makeshift studio. This starts to then inconvenience your family and you have to spend extra time moving furniture around - going to the shops to buy background fabric; going to a mates house to borrow their lens, sitting at a computer making lists and thinking about how you're going to do it - researching ideas and poses. Then you realise that maybe you should test this all out with your partner, so you have set it all up and do a test shoot to ensure that it goes smoothly on the day. Then you realise there's going to be some post production and so on. Suddenly the £150 you quoted divided by all the time you've spent researching and preparing doesn't look so clever...
This is a situation that people who don't assist or go to college find themselves in unless of course they've previously worked as a free-lancer/sole trader.
The time spent on this project suddenly mounts up with all of the unexpected additional work and tasks that you didn't foresee. What you thought you'd just knock out quickly in an hour, gradually builds up into 14 hours of unexpected 'Work' activity that in a real world needs to be factored in to your price.
Needless to say - you can't go back to the customer and say "Actually John, the whole thing took far more time than I expected and the invoice I'm sending you is for £750.00".
In these types of scenarios where you don't think these things through and you end up working for £10.71 an hour as opposed to your proper rate, that's down to you and your inexperience and lack of business acumen. As a photographer there's a chance, you'll do this once or twice and learn from the experience - but you can get your head around this scenario by tracking how much time you spend on your projects and how much money you spend on equipment, props, food and travel.
Use the hard-copy time/cost sheet that you've been given in class. Photo-copy it and use it over the duration of the project filling it in every week.
At the end of the project add up all the time and costs spent on the project and multiply the time by your hourly rate (£50.00) - it'll end up usually in the thousands of pounds region. Then look at your work and your indicated operational context and ask yourself critically...
- "Is my work of a standard that it could be used in that context e.g. is it fit for purpose"?
- "Can you imagine being paid that for the work you've done - is that a realistic fee"?
Then reflect on how you could produce the same work in a far more efficient way if you were a professional Photographer - what would be the cost implications and what would be involved to make the whole process far more professional and cost effective?
