The forecast turns on Thursday. The shoot is Saturday, outdoors, booked six weeks ago, and the client's message says they would prefer to move it to the following weekend, which you have already given to somebody else, and which they assume is free because a reschedule sounds like a small thing.
It is not a small thing. A photographer's product is a day, and a day is stock that expires at midnight. Everything on this page follows from that.
The date is the product
Nothing else in freelance work is quite this perishable. A designer who loses a week can make it up; a photographer who loses a Saturday in June has lost a Saturday in June. Which is why the deposit in this trade does more work than in any other: it is the price of turning other work away, and it should be described that way in the quote. Half up front, non-refundable, holds the date.
Reschedule terms sit beside it in the same paragraph. One move at no charge with a stated notice period; a second move at a stated fee; a cancellation inside the notice period forfeits the deposit. For outdoor work, a weather line: who calls it, how many hours before call time, and what a weather move costs versus a client move. The client reads all of this before they pay anything, and that is the point.
"Just a few more edits"
A shoot that took a day takes another two in retouching, because every request is small. Forty selects becomes fifty-five. The one round becomes a trickle of emails from the client's marketing lead, each with two images attached. Skin, sky, the logo on the wall, the chair that was in the wrong place.
The quote needs two numbers: how many finished images, and how many rounds of retouching, with a round defined as one consolidated list. Extra images at a stated price each. Extra rounds at a stated price each. The definition is the part that holds; the count on its own does not.
The licence nobody wrote
Images get used. A portrait commissioned for a website appears on a billboard. A product shot commissioned for a launch runs in paid advertising for three years. If the quote said "40 finished images" and nothing about where they go, the client can reasonably believe they bought all of it.
Write the use as a positive list: the website, social channels, print collateral, for this period. Broader use (paid media, packaging, resale to a third party) is a separate licence with a number, in the first quote, so the client who wants the billboard buys the billboard.
The delivery timeline goes here too, plainly: selects within a stated number of working days, final images within another. It is the least interesting line on the quote and the one clients ask about first.
The shoot, on paper before the day
You paste the notes from the brief call. North drafts the proposal as options that are different sizes of shoot (a half day and twenty finished images; a full day and forty; the day plus a second location and the broader licence), each with the scope counted: the hours on site, the finished-image count, the retouching round with its definition, the use. Each item comes with one sentence about what the pictures have to do, in the client's words. Each option defends its price by naming the parts of the scope that carry the number.
You edit the draft, add your reschedule and weather terms if they are not there, and press send yourself. The client reads it at a private link that carries your name and your colour, accepts, verifies their email once, and signs. After signing, the accepted option can become stages: a deposit stage first, then the shoot, then selects, then final delivery, with dates, which the client watches from the room. The deposit stage can be billed on its own the moment the contract is signed, and on the paid plan the client pays it by card into your own Stripe account, so the date is held by money that has arrived rather than by a promise. The balance invoice is drafted from the project when delivery is ticked off, sent by you, and you see when it is opened.
The proposal takes your own imagery. For a photographer that is not decoration; it is the argument.
What it is not, for a shoot
North is not a booking calendar and does not know when you are free. It does not build shot lists, hold galleries, run client selects or deliver files. Proofing and delivery stay wherever they are now. What North holds is the paper that says what the day includes, when it can move, and what the pictures may be used for, signed before the sky gets a vote.
Common questions
- Should a photographer take a non-refundable deposit to hold a date?
- Yes, and say what it is for: it holds the date, and it is the price of turning other work away. Half up front is standard practice for project work rather than a survey figure. Write the reschedule terms next to it: one move at no charge with a stated notice period, a further move at a stated fee, and a cancellation inside the notice period forfeits the deposit. Nobody argues with a clause they read before they paid.
- How many retouching rounds should be included in a photography quote?
- One round on a stated number of selects, with a round defined as one consolidated list of changes, is a common baseline; further images or further rounds are priced per image or per round in the same document. Retouching is where a shoot quietly doubles in hours, because each request is small and each one is 'just.' The number of finished images matters as much as the number of rounds: forty finished images is a deliverable, 'the good ones' is not.
- Do I need a weather clause for outdoor shoots?
- For anything outdoors, yes, and it is short: who calls the weather day, how many hours before the call time, and what a reschedule costs when the reason is weather versus when the reason is the client. A clause that treats both reschedules the same way is fairer to the client than it sounds and far easier to enforce, because it removes the argument about whose fault the sky was.