Please share your story about how you...

My story....

A few years ago I was asked by a friend to take pictures at a couple local race tracks. I said that sounds like fun, and for the most part it was. Right until you try to sell a great shot to one of the racers. Every week I would hand out 4x6 watermarked samples figuring to generate some sales. At the time I was charging 3$ for a 8x10 and was told on more than one occasion that was too much. That statement usually ended with me ripping the picture up and handing it to them. I couldn't understand how these guys could literaly spend thousands on their cars and nothing on memories. I finally came to realize I was much happier taking pictures of what I want, when I want, where I want, and give them to who I want. I wish I had a happier story, but after reading a few of the others, I see I'm not the only one.
Best of luck,
Brian

Davidkl said:

I've been shooting my kids at snowboarding competitions for a few
years now and the other kids from their team. I posted the pictures
on a smugmug site (non-pro account). Didn't even know that parents
were ordering pics from the site (at cost - no profit) until the
parents told me about it (non-pro accounts don't get notified when
people order). Last season some parents from the other teams asked to
shoot their kids. I did, upgraded my smugmug to a pro-account ($150
year) posted the pics, handed out cards. Got some sales from the
site ( http://www.kleinpix.com )but not a lot. Also - it you shoot the
same group all the time, parents learn to wait until the end of the
season to see all the pictures before ordering. Bottom line - I shoot
for the fun of it, will let strangers order from my site at a profit
and I give the parents I know the pics of their kids for free.

David

Click to expand...

Thank for sharing your story, David! Great website, too.

So, when you were approached by the other teams, was anything explicitly said about whether your pics would be free or not? Or, do you think there was a tacit understanding that your pics would not be free?

Regards,
RangerJoe

Image_Thief said:

That statement usually ended with me ripping the picture up and handing it to them.

Click to expand...

Now THAT is funny! I would have loved to seen that.

But, sorry it didn't work out for you. I bet many folks would advise you to keep trying...if that is what you want to do.

Thanks for your story!

Regards,
RangerJoe

You have a better chance if you shoot at a tournament with a lot of out of town people you don't know.

I shot a couple hockey tournaments. Printed on site, which is the only way to get people to buy anything. I grossed about $1500 over 3 days each time.

Even then, when you look at the hours put in by 4 or 5 people, the hourly rate isn't that great.

A couple things I learned:

Take head shots of the kids, even if they're standing looking at the game. We called these shots "mom" shots. We took a couple pictures of kids looking out at the ice kind of by accident, and the moms went nuts. After that we made sure we took a bunch of those at each game.

We would shoot the first game, print up about 20 photos and hang them on the wall for people to see the quality of the shots. That worked pretty well. We usually ended up selling about 80% of them anyway.

Another thing we did was have people request us to shoot their kid. We would send the shooter (me and one other) out with a list of numbers for each team. The parent would put down a $20 deposit that would go toward their order. This guaranteed us a sale, but more importantly we were shooting someone who planned on buying pictures.

We sold our 8x10's for $20, with a buy three get one free option. People who go to tournaments plan on spending money. You just need to take it before they buy a shirt.

Good luck!

A "mom" shot



--
Doug D.
'Promise a rainbow, and someone will look to the sky.'
Equipment in profile.

http://public.fotki.com/DougD/

1) What you call the ‘mom’ shot, I call a JSA shot. ‘Just Standing Around’. But I agree, if you do it with a narrow depth of field, nice lighting and some emotion, they sell pretty well.

2) I LOVE LOVE LOVE your idea to require a deposit to shoot a specific kid. I’ve tried that ‘shoot by request’ model. And it really generates a buzz. But often, I never see or hear from the parents again. Plus while shooting their kid, we might miss another sellable shot. And sometimes, the kid we are requested to shoot might not even play, so we can’t take any action shots. If they pay you a little up front, you can take some head shots, and maybe even warmup shots. FANTASTIC idea! Thanks man!

....and the way we sold it was by telling the parents that we follow the action, and we can't guarantee we'll get their kid, UNLESS they put in the request. It worked really well, and I think we only returned one and that was to one of those people who was never going to be happy. We just gave them their money back. It wasn't worth the hassle.

--
Doug D.
'Promise a rainbow, and someone will look to the sky.'
Equipment in profile.

http://public.fotki.com/DougD/

and I end up losing (when gas is figured in) about the price of a new car each year.
I do it cause I love the music and I love doing it.

granted, this year, I've not blown anything on equipment, so my loss will be small.

7 1/2 years ago, a promotions company emailed me and asked if I would like a photo-pass with my free ticket. I said yes and then at the show, shooting concerts just "clicked". why didn't I notice it before?
the pictures were TERRIBLE.
one of the best shots of that night



I looked at the pictures when I got home and thought "I need to get better at this"

7 1/2 years later and I'm starting to get ok... (some "better" ones from the past couple weeks)











in the end, I revert and move forward, revert and move forward, revert and move forward. in the end, I hope I get just little bit better. now, each month, I can go to B&N and see my photos in atleast one (this month 3 or 4) magazines.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.returntothepit.com



pictures up within hours of the show

I told the other parents where to look for the pictures (my smugmug site). If they wanted to order , they could since I had already priced them accordingly after upgrading to the pro account. It was pretty straightforward.

Image_Thief said:

My story....
A few years ago I was asked by a friend to take pictures at a couple
local race tracks. I said that sounds like fun, and for the most part
it was. Right until you try to sell a great shot to one of the
racers. Every week I would hand out 4x6 watermarked samples figuring
to generate some sales. At the time I was charging 3$ for a 8x10 and
was told on more than one occasion that was too much. That statement
usually ended with me ripping the picture up and handing it to them.
I couldn't understand how these guys could literaly spend thousands
on their cars and nothing on memories. I finally came to realize I
was much happier taking pictures of what I want, when I want, where I
want, and give them to who I want. I wish I had a happier story, but
after reading a few of the others, I see I'm not the only one.
Best of luck,
Brian

Click to expand...

heck with that - too much work.

"hi,

I was just at your track and got a few good shots of a few of you driving around. I think you may like some, however I was mostly just messing around and trying to get one or two shots for the day - mostly for the pratice and for my portfolio.

I would be more than happy sometime to stop by and get pictures of your car, as well as others if you didn't mind. It was a fun time and it would be cool if I could get some more good images and put them to use. If this keeps working out I would be more than happy to talk about payments and a contract - however for right now it's just for fun and I could try and get you a good shot or two.

Please email me and we can talk this over."

and it's done!

you made a good impression, and you may get invited back if the results are worthwhile.

I just make it sound like something I do for fun (which I do) and something I'm not looking for money for. However, draw a line between what's fun and work, and tell them you're only doing this because nothing else is going on.

=)

but when you're selling stuff you have to remeber this...

I'm the type of querky person who won't spend anything on cd's and think $15 for one is a waste of time - but yet I'll go to the record shop (I'm a dj) and drop $10 per song, and/or $40-50 on about 10 used records. People are weird, and they may see a $10 print to be too much, however offer them the file for $10 or something - then you get gas money at least. Or just give it to them for free and work on a realationshop from there.

=)

--
http://www.andrewthomasdesigns.com

1) a friend wrote his concert photography hero and the response back was "you'll always spend more than you make"

2) the advice i give to aspiring photog's who want to live solely off photos: Get ready to shoot weddings.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.returntothepit.com



pictures up within hours of the show

for all the input, folks! Very helpful.

After reading and mulling over these responses, I can see my biggest problem is that self-promotion is something that doesn't come natural to me. Need to work on that.

Thanks again for reading and responding.

Regards,
RangerJoe

thanks to the original poster and all who contributed. This is great info.

Hi,

I started out pretty much exactly the same way you are, taking pics of the various sports that my kids were involved in (mostly soccer and hockey). One day out of the blue after one of my daughters practices I was approached by the league convenor who asked me if I would be interested in covering one of the leagues tournaments and if I could provide on site sales. Turns out one of the other parents from my daughters team was on the board for the league and had told the convenor that my shots were better than any of the compainies they currently had working the tournaments. I was of course very flattered to be asked but then had to give it very serious thought because if I was going to do it I wanted to do it as proffessionaly as I could, the league gets a percentage of your sales so obviously the better you do the better the league does and then they ask you back. After much hesitation I decided to give it a shot, that was six years ago and I have been doing hockey tournaments ever since, only now I get called first and have my choice of arenas to work at. I have learned a lot over the time and streamlined my process for maximum efficiency.

The following is a little list of advice that I would give to anyone thinking of taking on some sporting events, the experience comes from hockey specifically but should translate to any sport.

1. You have to produce results that parents know they could not achieve themselves, this simply means having good equipment and knowing how to use it.

2. I never take shots of players just standing around, I advertise myself as an "action shooter" and that's what I do. The reason for that is every other company at every other rink has already displayed 10 "headshots" of the kid standing on the ice doing nothing, and to be honest almost any parent out there could achieve the same shot with a high end point and shoot ( refer to #1 ! )

3. Do not take a shot of every kid on the team just for the sake of having at least one shot, your wasting your time because they won't sell. Again concentrate on peak action and make sure that the ball or puck or whatever it is thier all chasing is in the frame!!!

4. For sports that involve running, skating, jumping etc. shoot in portrait orientation!!! and fill the frame with your subject, there are to many people still shooting horizontally and 50-70% of the image is wasted distracting background garbage!

5. Shoot as wide open as you can, having a very narrow DOF helps to isolate the player from foreground or backround objects, also whenever possible try and choose a shooting location that eliminates as much backround clutter to start with.

6. When doing onsite sales, make sure that your slide show is up and running BEFORE the parents and kids are out of the locker room after the game, they will not hang around even if the wait is only 2 minutes.

7. Have ready made photo templates that apply to the event, then Mom just picks out which color scheme, they usually choose something that matches the uniform colors, then you just change the team name, kids name and number, and position, then pop in the photo and your done!! you want this part of the process to run in under 5 minutes, most of that time being burned up while the parent decides on which template.

8. I use a total of 5 computers, 3 laptops and 2 desktops, 2 laptops run the slide shows which are diplayed on 21 inch lcd monitors up on stands, I have one desktop running PS and is the work horse for putting the photos into the templates and then printing out to my kodak 8500 dyesub, the other desktop has an archive of all games, parents will often wait till the last day of the tourny to make thier purchase, I just ask them what day and time thier game was and bring up the thumbnails, we do a quick browse till we find the right kid.

9. This should probably come higher in the list but one thing that is very important ( at least to me it is ) I allways do a real quick edit of each games pics and trash anything that is not in crisp focus or for whatever reason is not a saleable image. Others may argue with this one and I have heard many other shooters say things like "man you would be surprised what some will parents will buy even if its a really poor photo" yes some parents will buy garbage images but the thing to remember is even though that parent may be thrilled with it they are going to to go show all the other parents on the team and say "look at the nice picture I bought". My theory on this one is that of course during the course of every game I am going to take a few bad shots and I know and expect that, but your customers don't need to know that you screw up just like everyone else.

10. FACES FACES FACES!!, parents are much more inclined to buy a good action shot if thier childs face is clearly visible.

11. I usually aim for a total of about 35 - 50 photos from each game, keep in mind I usually cover 2 icepads that have a new game starting every half hour, that means that I shoot only the first period of each game ( roughly 20 minutes) then I download and edit, then it's off to the start of the next game. If you have more than 50 photo's I have found that parents will loose interest, they just don't want to stand around waiting for the slide show to cycle through too many pics.

I hope you find some of this helpfull and if you decide to get into it you will likely enjoy it, it is a ton of work and I don't think I would want to do it full time but 3 tournaments a year allows me to buy lots of photo equipment that I otherwise wouldn't be able to afford!

Dave

Sorry forgot one more little piece of advice, the victory celebration! wether it's a goal a home run a touchdown whatever, most players will do some sort of victory "dance" make sure you shoot it!!! Ideally you get the player isolated right after the goal doing thier own little celebration, rip off a few shots and just stay focused on them, as soon as the other players start showing up in the fram start firing cause they are joining in the celebration. These shots are pure gold and will sell 99 percent of the time and usually multiple copies.

Dave,

Thanks for your contribution! I take my hat off to you for taking on a job like that with no prior experience.

Regards,
RangerJoe

Hi!

I'm strictly an amateur. In my past I was a 'professional' trumpet player and water skier. I had pretty good success with trumpet, and placed in National competitions with skiing. I loved doing both, but noticed that financial security was not a big part of either, even among some of the best in the world. Plus, it started to become not just fun, but also work.

I eventually became a physician, something else that I love doing (usually).

Now, I can afford my hobbies, but without the pressure to perform or please someone else. A case in point: Last Spring I was attending a rodeo and having a great time shooting the opening ceremonies at night. Next to me was the pro photographer from the local paper, who was sweating bullets about the dim lighting ( Ishot at ISO 1600 on my D200!). He had a deadline to come up with a photo that was to run on the front page of the next day's paper. Guess who was having more fun between the two of us.

BTW, here's my photo of those opening ceremonies. I liked it better than what he came up with (he didn't time it right to get the fireworks burst) , but I'm biased!:
Nikon D200 ,Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR
1/100s f/5.6 at 80.0mm iso1600



Other Rodeo pictures here:
http://www.pbase.com/rbfresno/clovis_rodeo&page=all

Personally, I don't think I would enjoy photography as much if it were my job, unless I was in the rarified air of someone like Thomas Mangelen, who has managed to be artistically and commercially successful:
http://www.mangelsen.com/

As it is, I'm having a great time with photography! One from last weekend:
Nikon D200 ,Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR
1/90s f/2.8 at 135.0mm iso800



Best Regards,

RB

http://www.pbase.com/rbfresno/profile

I must say I share your view, if "had to" go out and shoot pictures every day it wouldn't be long and I would hate photography. I learned my lesson on that when I shot archery. I did it for quite a few years, got good, won state level comps, and a national, then you've got companies wanting you to "test" their equipment, which means go to every comp and win with their equipment. Its a lot of pressure, and theres no living to be made for your troubles. It wasn't long I wasn't shooting well and certainly not having any fun at all. That was when I sold my archery gear and took up photography. I have a good job that lets me afford the equipment I want so if I never make a dime thats fine with me. I am quite happy doing this as a hobby. I do a few weddings and other things for friends/family but I limit myself and to avoid a burnout.
Brian