Times are tough. You haven’t received a pay raise in several years. Maybe your spouse has lost a job. Or you are worried about the longevity of your position, and whether it will be there a few short months from now.
So you decide to shoot a few weddings on the side. Weddings are easy; or so everyone says. Even the guy at the camera shop told you it’s a great way to make a little cash.
So you put the word out there on a few free sites – Craigslist, Facebook etc. And you get your first wedding.
You lowball it, and charge $750 for a full day of photography. You promise the bride a CD with her digital files, which means no true cost to you. So the $750 is pretty much all yours. Right?
The day comes, and everything moves along smoothly. Until “IT” happens.
“IT” can be just about anything.
- Your camera jams, and with only one camera body, you can’t shoot the rest of the wedding.
- You rely on one Flash card, and it’s corrupt. Which means the entire wedding disappears.
- You drop your one and only camera, and it quits working.
- The bride and groom hate your work.
- You take the family outside for family portraits, and the grandmother trips and falls over your tripod and ends up in the hospital with a broken hip.
So your first time photo shoot to make a little extra cash turns into a million dollar lawsuit based on a 3 second error. [Read more…]