Was the price unreasonable?
No. But the client never agreed to it either.
Do you not edit your pictures the way I do and do you only use presets?
No.
What would you recommend to do in that situation
Accept the price the client had in mind.
And in the future, make sure you are on the same page and in agreement on the price before you perform work for free.
I mean the goal for me is making shit that's unique and that has an impact.
So what would be external indications that you have the impact that you want? How do you know when you're meeting that goal? And/or how do you know that you aren't meeting it now?
You don't want to progress a goal but then miss the signs and continue to think you achieved nothing. And you don't want a goal that is so vague that it's impossible to know if you're really succeeding at it or not. Either way you're setting yourself up to always be failing at it.
they do so with little margin of error
Every photographer only shows their very best results. You don't really know how many other attempts/failures/rejects were also behind that same project, and usually it's more than you think. Don't expect all of your work to match up to the very best of someone else's work, because they likely have also produced lots of crap that they just hid from you.
More money = more creative freedom.
That money could come from anywhere, though.
If you really want a certain amount of money to fund a certain piece of equipment, or plane ticket, or event ticket, it's possible non-photography work could get you that money faster, and help with your opportunities in photography. Money is money.
Im kinda confused on that last part though. From what i understand, you're saying that worrying about my skill and comparing won't help me reach that goal? If thats the case no.
Right. Keep thinking about your goal, and the things relevant to achieving it or gauging your success at it. That should help diminish the importance in your mind of things that have nothing to do with your goal.
But the act of not comparing isnt as easy as flipping a switch either.
Nothing will be. I'm just offering small suggestions to help a little.
I know comparison is bad for all our overall progression
So don't do it.
First be honest about yourself about what you really want out of photography. Probably it isn't just to be better relative to certain others, so focusing on your real goal will help you avoid the irrelevant, and you can think about what actually matters for what you want instead.
By "better" I guess I mean more sucessful.
Like financially? That has much more to do with business, marketing, networking, and people skills, and is not as much about photography skill.
yet knowing alot, i feel like my concept of photography and skill is miniscule, and there are much better photographers out there.
That's probably true because it's basically true for everyone.
You will continue to improve by a lot compared to where you are now, if you keep producing. And after that, the above will still be true.
But does that actually matter for the goal you have in mind?
found some cheap softboxes - 2 for 100$
A softbox is just a light modifier and it has a relatively simple job; softboxes can be made DIY style with household materials and still work fine.
What matters more is the light source you're using inside the softbox. If that's also included in that price, it's probably something like CFL bulbs which are going to be very weak for portrait work.
https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/wiki/buying#wiki_continuous_or_flash.3F
They have a temperature of 6500 kelvin - is this a good solution?
That just tells you about the light color, which you could also freely adjust using your camera's white balance setting, if you're shooting digital instead of film.
Should I invest in more expensive lightboxes where I have more control over the temperature?
You want better light sources with higher output and more control over output.
Color temperature control in the light isn't important unless you need to mix or balance that in a specific way relative to other light sources in the scene The camera's white balance can't help you there because that's a global setting that applies equally to everything in the scene.
My in-laws got us a donut shop gift card which costed $18 for 15 premium donuts. Everything was great the donuts were delicious. The shop had about 300 donuts on display and we were able to choose 15 to take home. All the donuts were in a glass display case so we could look at them but not grab them from the customer side. We asked about this she stated it's common. Because people try to steal donuts if they're just left out in the open. We asked about adding a few extra. She wants $1 per 1 additional donut, $3 for 5, and $8 for 20 I was so confused. And asked what happens to the donuts we don't buy she said they will be thrown away because it was the end of the day and they would be expired when the store opens tomorrow. To which I said but why couldn't we have all the donuts if you're going to throw them out, there's a lot of really good donuts we like. She paused and said that's just how things are done and this is standard. Idk it's really making me want to never deal with a donut shop again. Cause it seems like a money grab to me. Am I wrong?
Arguably yes. And certainly the client is partially at fault too for not getting on the same page about that beforehand.
But the client would argue that their perception of the business standard would be the lower pricing they got from these other photographers in that circle. And many jurisdictions have laws and judges that tend to side with consumer protection. In California, for example, many businesses are really careful to present the customer with a written quote of pricing, and to get a signature on that before doing anything. Caveat emptor is a thing too, but when it comes to a "they should have known better" situation, often it's the business that's primarily on the hook for having the responsibility of knowing better. Otherwise you open things up to predatory situations where a business charges what they want, hoping the client never asks first, and claims the client agreed to whatever their charge was going to be. It's a lot easier for a court to just require that the business be upfront on pricing, and the business is screwed if they aren't (an easy, objective, hard line decision); as opposed to having to research and evaluate if whatever surprise pricing was reasonable or not (a subjective decision with a lot of gray area).