Best MILC for Shooting Figure Skating?

Good for you and your daughter. It's obvious that she is someone who is willing to put time and effort into something she is interested in (she wouldn't be skating at the level she is otherwise). This sort of attitude deserves encouragement not sarcasm.

There are several reasons the contracted are producing low quality images. 1) they're just starting out and haven't perfected their technique. 2) They have made poor equipment choices (bad lens choice mainly). 3) They are a general local photographer who got the gig because the organisers just looked in the phonebook and booked a photographer (this is sort of a combination of 1 and 2).

There is a reason why photographers charge large amounts for events. A lot of it is down to things that you don't see. Things like the time it takes e.g. for a 4 hour event there is extra time spent travelling to and from the event. Then once it's over there is several hundred images to pick through to generate the album (if you're quick just 2 hours, that's just selecting the however many images you've agreed to deliver no editing). After that if you're lucky burn to CD/DVD and pop into the post. Of course nowadays people want to see the photos on the web, so you've got to batch process them for the web and upload them to your website (make sure they can order prints and you get a cut of each print, but don't rely on making money that way) that's another couple of hours. Then there is incidental costs like the cost of getting to the event. You're probably going to need some insurance both equipment and public liability. Imagine if you dropped your camera and it landed on somebodies foot and broke their toe! Then you have to cover the cost of your equipment, you'll probably want to budget to replace it every two years.

Say that's eight hours of work but you only get two of those a week. To make on average minimum wage you have to charge 2.5 times minimum wage for each of those hours.

The trick with making money from photography is to get it right in the camera. Anything you do thereafter just cuts into any money you make. Putting lots of time into editing a single image means you've got to make a lot from that one image.

Remember don't let your daughter undersell herself. It's a lot easier to lower your prices a little because people think you are expensive than it is to raise your prices once you have a reputation of being cheap.

There is a lot to learn I'd suggest that if your daughter has skated in any of the competitions that Marianne has listed on her site then invest $10-20 in one of her CDs of your daughter then have a look at them to see what she thinks of them. Nowadays digital photos contain embedded information about how they were taken so your daughter can learn a lot from that alone.

If your daughter is interested then get her the best kit you can (concentrate on the lens rather than the body). It's going to be like the skating, a lot of hard work, a lot of disappointment and frustration but at the end it could pay off and she'll have the satisfaction of being able to produce good photographs in some of the most taxing conditions.

I saw a great quote from a well known UK sports photographer (Bob Martin) when asked what his secret was he replied "Practice, good equipment and luck....but the more I practice the luckier I get".

Here's wishing yor daughter all the best

Ian