You’re right this is all down to negotiation. The idea of BUR is to give you a tangible base from which to calculate additional licences.

The BUR figure is assuming the complete “set” of images supplied in the examples above and the client knows that the “set” contains X images. some photographers set a BUR PER IMAGE which can work if you are doing low volume/high production value work. BUR is just a tool to make calculating usage easier to understand.

Now, in your case you have quoted a day rate and a BUR for an unlimited amount of images that isn’t specified, so one part of the equation is missing. However all is not lost.

Let’s say you supply 65 images and they want to use 6 in print in a flyer. Calculate as 6/65ths(or however many finals you produce) X BUR % for the media they want, for the time they want it. So work on a fraction of the set (and this applies to additional uses or re-uses) unless they’re licencing the whole set.

Hope that makes sense.

Always remember to estimate a price for X images, Y uses, Z period of time. Get those three elements in there somewhere so there’s no question of “unlimited”.

Oh, and when you supply the web finals, limit the size to 1024px 72ppi – don’t give them 300ppi hi-res! That way you still have control.

Best

PP

Using your words of wisdom and advice on the AOP site as a guide, I have set my day rate at £695 for a two day corporate photography shoot, plus a post production fee of £300, giving a total of £1,690. The images are being taken for their web site and I’ll grant them usage rights for online, unlimited time, in the UK. Sadly I didn’t specify in my initial estimate how many photographs I would supply, however I would guess that it would be approximately 65.

I now know that the client will want to use some of the images for brochures and flyers so I want to provide them with an estimate for that use. They have already said to me that they’d be happy to use the images from their web site in the flyers. Something which would not be covered by my licence and they would look really bad. Anyway, I understand about how to calculate the re-usage fee based on my BUR, however does that apply to all the images I supplied to them or is it per image.

For example, they want to use one image in a run of 1,000 flyers to be distributed in the UK. I would negotiate a re-use fee based on 25-50% of my BUR. They then decided that they would like to use 6 images in different flyer. Would I calculate (25-50% of BUR) times 6, for the 6 images. Or would the re-use fee cover all of the images I originally supplied? But only for that particular flyer?

I appreciate that it’s all down to negotiation, however I wanted to know what’s “normal” and I wanted them to know and appreciate how it works. As with a lot of clients, they were fully expecting to pay me a fee and then own the photographs, to do anything they liked with them.

It was a mistake not to specify the number of images I would supply, also not discussing usage rights fully right at the beginning was stupid, however I’m learning as I go along.

All help and advice much appreciated.

Nic.

Yes it’s easy to adapt to the event market. See my reply to an event shooter who asked the same question in the comments section of Part Four:

http://www.thephotographybiz.com/photography-business/assignment-photography-how-to-charge-and-price-up-assignments-part-four/#comment-332

PP