Shooting Sports for Profit - DPChallenge Forums

04/19/2005 11:09:35 PM · #26

I do a lot of sports photography. We do no post processing. We use Canon i960 printers (which they've discontinued, dangit!) and we take two - four with us depending on the event. Also depending on the event, we may have two photographers and three people at the tables (we're just a small company). The way we show people what we have is to print out contact sheets using the EZ Photo Print program that comes with the printers. These sheets have thumbnails with image numbers, and we number the sheets to match folders on the laptop. We use order tickets that customers fill out with the necessary information and bring to us, and we based our order system on the systems at many fast food restaraunts.

We do have an EZup tent, but we only do indoor venues after the time we had one take off on us. Plus our contact sheets tend to blow around if there's a breeze. The sheets may not be the best way to go, but four monitors and another laptop to run them is too much of an investment for us. Then too, we figured people would rather not stand and watch a thousand other pictures go by before their kid came up.

As for online sales, I think they are useful in their place. If you have a venue that won't allow you to sell, although your event organizers want you to come, it's good to run an ad in their program for your website. (thinking of some pageants I have done). With the sports events, there's still a place for online sales. I post everything I do and find myself making another $300-$400 month in online sales. So I find it worth it. The hosting service I use, called PhotoReflect, is very user-friendly and does all the processing for you.

To give you an idea of what kind of numbers this system can handle, our largest tournaments (wrestling) attract 1200 wrestlers and last two days. We shoot roughly 4500-5000 pics in that time. This requires a lot of organization, of course, but four people, four printers, two cameras, and one laptop can pull this off.

Marjo

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

04/19/2005 11:14:22 PM · #27

Wow. Great post moswyn. I've got a long way to go at only 40 photos and prints in 4 hours. Can I come assist so I can figure out how the heck you accomplish that? I'll work for food. lol

Canon PowerShot Pro 90 IS

04/19/2005 11:33:11 PM · #28

Originally posted by Marjo:

Wow. Great post moswyn. I've got a long way to go at only 40 photos and prints in 4 hours. Can I come assist so I can figure out how the heck you accomplish that? I'll work for food. lol

It's extremely fast-paced, but we have a lot of fun with it. Of course, we've scared away a lot of help too... If you were nearby and could keep up, I'd have you along sometime :) We do two huge tourneys like that (one's coming up the first weekend in May), and about 15 or 20 smaller ones of about 300 or 400 wrestlers. I tend to do the smaller ones myself and get about 1200 images.

The rough part is when the laptop locks up, as it always does at least once a day. Things can get backed up a bit and people might have to wait as long as half an hour - though they usually leave and come back to get their prints anyhow.

edit to add: The difference between 40 prints in four hours and what I do is that these tournaments *are not* art. They're snapshots - little bits of time - but they're not art. One girl I'm working with is studying photography in college, and she had the hardest time getting that figured out. We take four or five pictures, turn, take more, turn, take more. We take 40 pictures in five minutes because if we don't take em, we can't sell em :)

Message edited by author 2005-04-19 23:37:45.

coolhar

04/19/2005 11:42:27 PM · #29

Very interesting moswyn. No post processing, and you shoot only indoors. You must use a lot of lighting equipment. Do the printers tweak things like saturation and sharpness perhaps? No post processing? Not even an occasional crop? I know you are a good photog, I remember some of your auto racing shots. I am very impressed with the operation you have described.

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM

04/19/2005 11:58:39 PM · #30

Originally posted by coolhar:

For a long time, I was hesitant to use flash and shot only available light with an aperture of 2.8. I often shoot at 1600 or 3200, although now I use the on-camera flash (I know, I know - ON CAMERA?!? when I have a 550EX?! But it all gets to be so heavy after eight or ten hours...) just to pop a little light into the dark areas. The printers don't tweak saturation or sharpness, but we do have a noise-reduction setting that we generally have set on high for obvious reasons. It is possible to crop using our printing software and sometimes whoever's running the computer will do that, but if we're busy, the images will go out just as they are.

Unfortunately, you must be thinking of someone else's racing shots - the only racing stuff I've taken has been stuff as a fan at the Indy 500 or the Brickyard 400 just for myself. I'd like to wow you with some of my stuff, but it's not really wow-worthy ;)

If anybody's interested, you're more than welcome to check out some stuff on the website - www.bowtiephotography.com. You can see how PhotoReflect works there too.

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

04/20/2005 08:48:27 AM · #31

Originally posted by jmsetzler:

If you are shooting for the purpose of selling the prints (not photojournalism) you need to have an agreement with the venue where the event is being held. I don't know where the audience issue with 2 or 4 people came from.. .I have never heard of that. If you shoot someone who is not participating in the event, you may not sell images of them without their consent. You can't sell any image with a recognizeable person in it without their permission. This is not a 'public' venue. It's private and the people attending have paid admission. If you are not in the US, the rules could be different I suppose...

This is somewhat true. If it is taken in a public place, you can basically sell/ print/ publish a picture of anyone, if they don't have a reasonable expectation for privacy. However, if you want to use it for advertising, or in some way to endorse a product, you'd need a model release. Many images are sold as stock, with people in them, without any releases being required - just not for advertising stock usage.

At a private event, the issue is with the owners/ organisers of the event giving you permission, not the people in the photographs.

PaulMdx

Canon EOS-1D

04/20/2005 08:59:34 AM · #32

With regards to selling shots unedited.. I think it comes down to whether you're going for a volume sales or high quality.

Inevitably my colleagues and I sell less because we edit them offsite and sell via the web. That said I hope our reputation is a reflection of that.

Email I received today:

>Are the photos you took at going to be available to view at anytime?
>yours are so much better than the ones available from that
>outfit!

(Incidentally most of our work is now done for magazines, mainly because our quality stands out.)

jmsetzler

Sony Alpha a6000

Sony 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 E-mount

04/20/2005 09:03:47 AM · #33

Originally posted by Gordon:

[quote=jmsetzler]

This is somewhat true. If it is taken in a public place, you can basically sell/ print/ publish a picture of anyone, if they don't have a reasonable expectation for privacy.

This is true. When you research what is and isn't 'public', your options get very thin. I could be wrong, but I believe that a sporting event would not be considered a public place in this sense.

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

04/20/2005 09:15:57 AM · #34

Originally posted by jmsetzler:

Originally posted by Gordon:

This is somewhat true. If it is taken in a public place, you can basically sell/ print/ publish a picture of anyone, if they don't have a reasonable expectation for privacy.

This is true. When you research what is and isn't 'public', your options get very thin. I could be wrong, but I believe that a sporting event would not be considered a public place in this sense.

Do you think that it matters if the person you are taking the image of is the person you are selling the image to? It's funny about all this, because we haven't ever had anyone with a problem regarding having their picture taken - and hopefully we never do! They all know we're there - they see our cameras, our t-shirts, our booth with pictures - and the only thing I've ever heard is: "Did you get my son?!? He just wrestled on mat 12!"

GeneralE

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

04/20/2005 09:31:43 AM · #35

Originally posted by moswyn:

If you start selling posters, or sell one of those photos to a supplement manufacturer for a magazine ad, you may have issues if your don't have a release.

It is most important to remember that, while you may have the right to take a photo, your rights as to what you can do with the photo may still be restricted.

colda

Nikon D800

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

04/20/2005 09:47:08 AM · #36

With regards to the no post-processing issue, I'm currently looking more into event photography and one thing that I'm doing to address the issue is to upload a more appropriate curve into my D70 and ensure that all in camera settings are as tuned as possible. The net result of removing the post-processing step is that it forces you to take your camera to it's limits - this is a good thing :)

Darren

LoudDog

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

04/20/2005 09:53:56 AM · #37

Originally posted by coolhar:

Originally posted by louddog:
Laptop, canon i80 or i90 printer and plug them into your car. A table, an EZ up and lighting helps.

louddog, what's an EZ up? I'm not familiar with that term.

It's basically just a portable roof, a tent without sides and a floor(although you can add sides). They go up in minutes. //www.ezup.com/

leaf

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

04/22/2005 06:31:29 PM · #38

Originally posted by moswyn:

Thanks for the great post, I was wondering what sort of a deal you make with the sports club?? do you give them a percent of your sales, or pay rent for the booth or any other type of compensation?...

coolhar

Canon PowerShot Pro 90 IS

04/22/2005 11:25:08 PM · #39

Bumping in hopes of a few more replies. I'm not looking for attaboys, just some opinions on whether these are of salable quality. Especially from people who have experience with this kind of selling, and also perhaps from parents who have childrem playing youth sports. Thanks in advance. Unedited Game Shots

leaf

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

04/23/2005 11:50:51 AM · #40

bump again to attract moswyn's attention. perhaps i need to send a personal message.

Telehubbie

Canon EOS-40D

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

04/23/2005 11:54:06 AM · #41

Originally posted by coolhar:

I'm not looking for attaboys, Unedited Game Shots

Can I give you an "atta boy" for number 10?!? 8^)