Our Base Usage Rate (BUR) - and how we determine what the fee would be, for us to produce and then provide you with our images, for you to use.

Because our goal is very simple: to provide you with the best images possible, to not only meet your needs but to exceed them too, whenever possible.

So far so good.

However, putting a price on that is not quite so simple.

Why ?

Because there are more than 100 different ways to shoot any subject – from quick snap-shots using just a basic camera...

.. through to full production staged shots, using a larger camera system, lights, models, stylists, etc, etc

Which basically means, depending on which way we choose to shoot it, that may in some way or other not only affect our costs, but it may also affect what the real value of the images are worth to you afterwards as well.

So the first big question beforehand, usually is: How good do the images actually need to be, to meet your usage requirements ?

As it's your usage requirements that will ultimately determine what the images are worth to you - and so naturally that needs to come first - since we are looking at producing these images for you to use, and therefore give you a price which would be based on that information.

So first things first - which means we first need to take into account what all you need to use the images for - the 3 main things being: the Media use, the Period of use & the Territory of use - as well as the number of images you need to use - as it's this information that we will then be using to help us determine what we need to do, to ensure we get it right for you.

And so this is were the Association of Photographer's BUR pricing system comes into play – as it helps us determine what the value of the images may be worth to you and therefore what the fee should be, to ensure we get it right for you.

The BUR figure is therefore simply our starting point, when being asked to quote a price beforehand.

As it’s what we would estimated our basic production costs would be, to produce some images that would be suitable (or good enough) for normal standard use.
(Standard use is considered to be for the use of the images in either 2 media for 1 year or 1 media for 2 years, in 1 country).

So we start by working-out what our basic production costs would be first, by taking the following things into account:

(Please note: some of these things may not apply - it's simply a check-list to help us work-out what our basic costs would be, to finance the project to a standard level).

And that then becomes our base rate figure - which we refer to as our Base Usage Rate (BUR).

(Or if we divide is figure by the number of images we plan to produce, then that would become our BUR per image figure.)

Then using the Association of Photographer's guidelines - which can also be found in their book Beyond the Lens - we workout what the fee would need to be, for us to produce the type of images you are going to need, to meet your actual usage requirements.

So the fee would be based on your usage requirements.

Rather than on the minimum amount that it would cost to take some pictures, which may be of little or no use to you at all.

The 2 Quotes approach.

Below you can see an example of the two Quotes that were sent to a client beforehand, to let them see what the difference in price would be - should they, after having seen the final results, wish to use our work for Standard use...

.. as well as should they want to use our work for more than Standard use - or for what they said they would like to use our images for in this case, before they saw the final results:

So we use the BUR figure to workout what the Licence fee would be - and it's then that amount that we go by, to help us determine what we can afford to do to achieve our goal.

Which is to produce & then provide you with some images that you will not only want to use, but will hopefully want to use a lot too - as this pricing system is very much incentive based.