People come to office expecting wedding pictures for $500, meanwhile they blown away $15000 on flowers, $5000 on a cake, etc. Shit is suppose to be simple job, point and shoot, whats so hard about photography I don't get it.
Expecting $400 for a 1 year old's birthday party from someone who is established, has a background of work, and can be expected to perform well isn't a big deal. Asking $400 for someone who has never shot before, doesn't have a knowledge of the equipment being used, and has no potential results is a little much IMO.
I shoot stuff like this fairly often, not kids birthday parties, but usually the "oh, I want a couple of nice pictures from our family reunion," or "I'm not having a very big wedding and want a few basic pictures from our reception," type stuff. Most of it in the $100-500 range.
I don't try and work cheap because I'm some craigslist photographer undercutting the local market, my rate for these kinds of things are low because that's what the local market and clients can afford and there's really nobody else out there offering a high level of service and pictures for a reasonable price.
If I spend 2 hours on something and charge $100 for some quick reunion pictures it provides more experiences for me to get out there and work, lets me shoot in a variety of (usually) challenging locations, and forces me to get my workflow down to an efficient level so I'm keeping the pay per hour fairly high.
The thing I like about jobs like this is the pictures there paying you for are easy to get, I can usually crank them off fairly quickly and know I'll get a professional result, and the rest of the time I can work on doing some cool creative things and if they work out great, if not, well hopefully I learned something but I've still got shots to deliver.
Yeah, it can be a grind, but you also learn what works and doesn't pretty quickly. I don't understand photographers that automatically assume their time is worth $50+/hr just because they're photographers.
three hours editing