Structuring the fee ...

What are your expenses?
Gas, tolls, transportation, food, parking/parking tickets, equipment, rental equipment, new accessories needed - e.g. lighting, printing costs, hard drive/thumb drive for the project?

How much time are you going to spend? ...

• pre project - talking with customer, planning, getting gear ready
• during project - driving there, taking photos, talking with customer, listening to customer change their mind, etc.
• post project - post production/editing, delivering to customer, making requested changes

Contracts, yes. Specify ...

• what the deliverables will be, how many photos, what format, and how many edits are included with the fee.
• how much time you'll spend onsite
• what will the extra charges be if they go over either of the limits specified above
• Whose responsibility is it to keep an archive of the photos?

Future gear upgrades, additions and replacements ...

• Start a fund to upgrade and replace your gear in the future. Every shutter click brings shortens your camera, media storage cards, and battery life. Also, buy good external drives for archiving and have an archiving plan/backup.

What to charge?

• You should charge at least what your hard costs will be (expenses). 50% payment up front.
• How much you charge per hour for your time is up to you, plus add in some additional $$$ for your future fund. How much you negotiate on this is also up to you.
• We outline fees per project, not by hour (unless the amount of time onsite exceeds what was agreed upon - then it's our choice to stay onsite or not)
• Whatever the prints costs plus a margin for your time/effort/coordinating with printer.
  

Deliverables

• We always deliver digital photos on a hard disk or USB drive. People know how to read files off a disk, less tech support.
• We have a relationship with a fine art printer to have fine art prints (using archival inks) made if needed. These are delivered to us and we deliver to customer.