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Comment by digitalclubb | Hacker News Reader

The photographer has gone about this the wrong way - the cost is actually his experience and time.

It's like the 'Picasso Principle' where a woman approached Picasso for a sketch, he did something in 5 minutes and quoted her $10,000.

She said 'it only took you 5 minutes' and his response was 'no, it took me a lifetime'.

Full read here: http://bit.ly/A8ABL4

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This reminds me of...

Tapping with a hammer ......................... $ 10.00 Knowing where to tap .......................... $990.00

The story is much longer... it involved a creaky wooden floor and two contractors. One quotes say $1000 and 7 days to fix, tears the whole thing up and fixes it. The other quotes $1000 pulls out his hammer and fixes the creaky floor with one nail in a few seconds.

Both fixed the problem, but the expert isn't worth any less than the guy who put in tons of man-hours.

In fact, the expert is worth a lot more, because he saves you 7 days of disruption.

Actually you fix a creaky floor with a screw, not a nail. It creaks because somebody used a nail in the first place. Just sayin.

I'd heard this as someone who fixed a design at the blueprints stage, charging £1,000 for what amounted to a few pencil marks. When asked for a break down the following was given: £0.10 for materials (the pencil), £999.90 for knowing where to make the marks and why.

I like all the variants. I heard the unnamed engineer version.

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/where.asp

It's like the guy who charged a thousand bucks to fix the machine by turning a screw; 1 buck for turning the screw, and 999 for knowing which screw to turn.

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