Event photography sales help (software and printing)

[Dayv27]

I shoot a lot of sports photography. I end up having to post the photos later after the event, and customers can buy from my site after.

I've gone to some tournaments where they have a photographer on site who has multiple tablets that you can view the photos right after the game and order prints on site printed with a die-sub printer. I can never get any answers from the photographers at the events, (fearing competition maybe??) but I'm trying to find some information on what software they are using to display the photos on multiple displays, allowing customers to order prints at the site.

All of my research keeps bringing up photo booth software, but that doesn't seem to have the options I'm looking for. Can anyone who does something similar give some insight to what setup you use? What software and printers? Just looking for a place to get started down the rabbit hole, I may just not be looking up the correct name of the setup.

Thanks!

 

[Bionic963]

If shooting tethered is not an option, then create a High-speed Wireless network Onsite. You also will want a gigabit router/switch on site as well. (Use gigabit Ethernet if possible to connect your supporting equipment (computers, printers, storage, credit card machine, etc).

Use a WFT device on camera to get photos transferred wirelessly from camera to your onsite network attached storage (could be a laptop, desktop, NAS devices etc.) I personally use a Dual Gigabit NAS device configured in a Raid 5 array using SSD's. Once the photos are on my NAS, I could have +50 tablets browsing the files at the same time with no lag..

Once images are all stored on a high speed network attached storage device you can then use tablets or computers to browse the photos that are stored on the storage device.

Or you can setup the network attached storage device to automatically upload those photos to a 3rd party website. You would then need to also have high speed internet access as well. You can get a dedicated hot spot device from a mobile provider, or use the hotspot feature on a cell phone. If the venue you are at has a wifi internet access you can use theirs, but in my experience the public wifi is to unreliable. I usually just bring my own hotspot.

Once those photos are uploaded, then use the tablets to access the gallery and order the photos.

Getting the photos out of the camera in real time, and transferred to some sort of server is the 1st step! After that there are many ways you can handle displaying them to the customers, and handling the point of sale. If printing on-site, you have your printers either directly connected to your network via gigabit Ethernet, or the printers can be connected to an onsite desktop/laptop computer that is connected to your network. Some printers can even connect via wifi.

For onsite payment, you need plenty of small bills.. $5, $10, $20, to be able give change and break bigger bills. Also have a credit card payment setup... I use 1 dedicated credit card machine, as well as the tablets that have credit card swipers attached to them.

For all this to work smoothly and stress free, you have to build out your throughput to match your expected peak traffic times. Also it helps to evaluate the goals you have, for this to be a successful event. Then build out the event setup to give your self a shot to hit those goals.

For instance... If I think a 4 hour event can do $5000 in on sites sales.. exactly what does that mean? Simplistically looking at it, $5000 / 4 hours = $1250 an hour, which equals $104.16 every 5 minutes. If each customer buy on average 2 5x7 prints at $10 each, total sales is $20. Lets say each customer takes 5 minutes of time to do the order and receive the print. So to hit the goal of $104.16 every 5 minutes i need to serve 5.2 customers every 5 minutes. So that means I need to have at least 5 stations and printers that 5 customers can walk up to and get served at the same time.

Like I said that is a simplistic overview.. Now you have to factor in that traffic comes and go.. Sometime the order area is empty, and at other times you are flooded with people trying to buy.. So that changes the dynamic of what you need to setup for, or lower your revenue expectations. Too further complicate this you also have to factor in profitability.. Keep in mine customer experience, revenue, and profitability are 3 different things! Providing On-Site Cash-&-Carry photo printing services requires a balancing act of those 3 things and can be great!!!!!,,, or frustrating and stressful for you and the customers.

A good analogy that come to mind is fishing.. You can fish with a single pole, or you can do a multi pole setup. Some people find great joy and are happy with fishing with a single pole. Other have multiple poles in the water, with line tangle management systems, and assistants to help.. Just depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

I have a lot of experience doing this type of stuff, so let me know if you have specific questions.

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Brook

 

[Dayv27]

Thank you for the detailed response!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me have a bit to digest it all and to look up the cost of the infrastructure and I'll be back with a few more questions.

 

[Erick 21]

Hi Brook

I just wanted to say that your very detailed and useful reply is incredibly helpful and does you credit. Replies like these are what makes DPP so valuable, but hey gear talk has its place too...

Erick

 

[GMSchneider]

I work for a youth sports photography company and we use Photo Parata (http://miltonstreet.com/news.php) for customers to review images. We primarily cover youth hockey, so all the games are listed by day by the game number. We use one computer that hosts all the images and is the wireless network hub. We then use a bunch of cheap windows tablets that are viewing stations that connect to the wireless network and access the networked computer. As far as printer goes, we have a bunch of dye-sub printers for normal sizes and a wide format printer for poster prints.

The other main photo review software was 5 Minute Photo, but unfortunately the owner passed away and no one else knows how the software works.

 

[Micheal Hall]

I personally write the software I use - I never found what I needed, so I made my own. I've spent the last 15 years writing it. I can now process and output by myself in one day what used to take three of us weeks to do. (I was not a programmer - I had to learn to program).

I don't print onsite - everything is shot RAW + JPG. JPGS are for display or digital purchase. Prints/collages/albums are processed from the RAWs offsite and sent to a lab for printing and shipping.

I learned a long time ago to concentrate on each experience in turn - focus all of my efforts and staff on a great tournament experience, not on trying to fulfill orders at that time, which is inherently stressful for all involved. Many of the competitors at the events I photograph have to travel via plane - waiting for prints to be made or trying to carry back a 20x30 print is not a good customer experience.

After the event, concentrate on retouching and fulfilling orders quickly.

I also do not offer online sales. That option, in my experience, unless tightly managed and shepherded, becomes an excuse *not* to order (life gets in the way). Also, my current iteration of the software requires a custom environment that doesn't run on your typical online server. The new version I am running I will be able to host online, if I choose to.

I returned from a major event on Saturday night. I'm in the final stages of checking all of the retouched products prior to uploading to the lab. By late this afternoon, I'll be completely done fulfilling the orders from the event.

Unfortunately, with the Corona virus lock-down, it may be my last event of what is usually my busy season (and my prime income earning season where 100% of my income comes from). I actually shouldn't event be home right now! The 2nd half of this major event was cancelled last weekend and I had to tear down our booth the scoot back to California.

Here's a shot of our booth from our final event of last year. The software I've written powers all of the 45 viewing laptops, the 55" TVs with slideshows, the cashier stations, the download/cull/ingest computers, the stations that integrate with the tournament's scheduling software so that we can download team schedules and efficiently assign our photographers to teams that have signed up, etc.




Our event photography booth.

This booth is a two man setup - takes about 18 hours (36 man hours) over two days.


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Micheal

 

[Bionic963]

Our event photography booth.

This booth is a two man setup - takes about 18 hours (36 man hours) over two days.

Thanks for sharing!

The 36 man hours, is that only setup and break down?

Would you mind breaking down the entire time investment from arriving at your office/storage site to pack up all the equipment, or does it stay stored in a trailer until you are ready to go to the next show? All the way through breaking down and repacking the trailer or unloading all the equipment back into you office?

Curious how many people and man hours this takes to setup, how many photographers it takes to feed this beast, how much customer support you need onsite, then breaking all down back to square 1?

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Brook

 

[tcphoto1]

I just shot a Youth Hockey Tournament and the owner of the company had about a dozen laptops in tables at each venue for people to review images. I hated having to go through the images as I shot and delete shots so they could upload cards for the slideshow at the tables. I believe that every image needs a little editing but that's not how he wanted it. I'm not sure what percentage of his sales were on site compared to online but he's been doing this for thirty years. If you don't have sufficient staff to take orders and print on site, I would simply stick to online sales.

 

[Micheal Hall]

That 36 man hours is just for unload and setup from the time we arrive at the venue. Usually, it's a two man setup crew - myself and my nearly 70 year old father, who's been with me since we started this crazy gig 19 years ago. (He's also the guy that does all of our woodworking - we have custom cabinets for our servers/cashiers/admin supplies and custom boxes for transporting things like our laptops). Aside from the one blue skirted table in the image, we bring and setup everything, including the 16' black pole and drape.

We store all of this in an indoor, climate controlled 10x20 storage unit between events. Takes about 2-3 hours to load a 16' box truck with all of the booth gear. Another few hours at home to prep everything else (batteries, cards, camera gear, servers, etc.) Our events are all over the Western US - drive times of 2 - 20 hours.

I try to arrive 2-3 days in advance of the event to begin the unload/setup process. Ideally we can drive the truck right up to our booth location and unload, then start setup the next day, conserving energy as much as possible!

I usually have 4-5 photographers (which includes myself) at a large event. With another 4-5 staff exclusively at the booth. Everyone wears multiple hats and backs each other up as much as possible. Photographers and booth staff drive or fly in the day before the event.

We photograph only by prepaid request/signup, and families can do that in advance via our website, or onsite at our booth. I generally arrive with the booth staff in the morning at 630am-7am to open the booth - get the lights turned on, the gear uncovered/turned on, the coffee brewed, etc. and be ready for the doors to open at 7:30am for warmups and 8am start time for play.

Booth staff are usually released about 9:30-10:00pm for a 6:30-7:00am start the next day. Photographers arrive at 730am. Photographers generally photograph from 8:00am - 9-10:00pm (occasionally later, if a court is running behind) and then we all pile in at the booth to help cull and crop the images for viewing by customers. This also happens throughout the day, but at a much reduced pace. We don't release anything for viewing by customers until we have reviewed the images (which means we don't leave the convention center until all images have been reviewed). Generally, we finish up culling and cropping around midnight to 1am. I then have about an hour of admin to finish up before I head back to the hotel. A 20 hour day at an event for me is pretty good. Often longer. My longest stretch without leaving a convention center was 42 hours - that year I had hired some outside photographers who were an absolute disaster and had to be fired after the first day of photography (they had knowingly misrepresented their qualifications). That was quite the mess to clean up!

I cover all the hotels, flights, shuttles, etc. as well as provide a break room in our booth with a fridge, microwave and coffee maker. I survey the group to find out what kind of foods they want and do shopping in advance - we're so busy there is no time to leave the booth to get a meal.

Events are usually three to four days (sometimes two weekends in a row in the same venue with different age groups), with the last day ending around 4-5pm. At that point, the staff who flew in jump in to begin tear down. They can usually help get all of our banners and drape down, our laptops stowed in their custom boxes, table cloths folded, samples put away, before they have to hop on a shuttle to the airport to fly home. That leaves my father and I to finish tear down. Quite often that is done around midnight to 1am (we've finished as late as 6am the following day before when we had no tear down help).

All of the banners at the booth, I print myself. I print a unique set of banners for each different region we work in, using images that were sold in that region the year before. I print about 4x the number of banners shown in that image. That usually takes about a week itself. Returning customers *love* it (there are often tears) - at the end of the year, I give the banners to the family for the cost of packaging/shipping.

Time investment for me on these things is huge - other than my father who helps with the load/unload drive and setup/tear down in addition to his booth duties, my staff only work event weekends. I handle all other tasks - admin, finances, arranging flights, hotels, shopping, loading/unloading, product design, banner printing, programming etc., etc.

After we return from events, I handle all order production and fulfillment.

In between events or during my slow season, I spend much of my time programming to streamline our software and flows, or improve our products.

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Micheal

 

[Bionic963]

Wow! Typically how many of these setup do you do in a year?

You have built one heck of a system, do you plan on handing the business down to a family member, perhaps a son or daughter? Or do plan on maybe selling the business? Or maybe hiring a COO to run the business as you would, and still be able to generate some passive income from it? Hell, with a proven system you have, you may be able to franchise it.. So many potential options with what you have built and perfected. What do you think your end game is?

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Brook

 

[Micheal Hall]

Thanks!

Yeah, it's been a journey alright. We started with a borrowed fold out card table and Costco printed 4x6 prints nearly 20 years ago. (I actually started photographing sports when I was in high school in the early 90s with a Nikon n8008s, an 85mm 1.8 and Kodak T-Max 3200. I would hand process the black and white film and prints and sell that to parents of my friends - didn't make much, but paid for a bit of gear and my film/paper/chemistry - also served as an idea nearly 10 years later when I was considering what to do as a photographer).

Mostly my crew is my family - two of my three brothers and my daughter are my long time photographers. This season I lost another photographer who had just gotten to be quite good to a cushy state job (that he doesn't like).

My booth crew this year is my father, my niece, a friend of my daughter's that I've known since she was 11, a former athlete I met 10 years ago and a new friend of mine I met last Fall.

I've found it most successful for me to care for my crew and build a crew of people I care for and promote that care amongst each other. I warn everyone that comes out to work for us that they *will* become part of the family. My most recent staff addition pulled me aside during her first event a couple of times to tell me how much she really liked the crew we had. It's crucial that everyone fit and get along really well, so I tend to hand pick carefully.

We do 8-10 major setups a season. I could do more, but it's a matter of having the crew I know, trust and, crucially, is available. I'm the only person that does this full time. My father is retired and helps out on various things, but mostly the events themselves and load/travel/setup/tear down (and honestly I don't see him doing this much more than the next couple of years - he's not as spry as he once was). The rest of the crew are event weekends only and have full time jobs (or in the case of my younger staff part time jobs and college schedules) that have to be worked around. Many of them run out of time off and can't come out to events I could otherwise book.

My forays into hiring photographers I didn't train myself weren't great (and not all of the photographers I have trained worked out either - this gig tends to chew them up and spit them out).

As to what I plan for an exit ... that's a good question! If you want to hear a shriek and see a girl run for the hills, suggest to my daughter that I hand this over to her when I retire (I'm only 44, so that's not happening soon). The only reason she comes out is because I tell her to (and she's paid well!). She's been coming to tournaments since she was 11 - she's 20 now. She started working at the tournaments when she was about 13 or 14. She grumbles, but at the same time, when this last weekend was cancelled due to Corona virus, she mentioned how surprised she was to find that she was disappointed and missed it. Go figure! (She's also my go to photographer if I can't photograph something myself. She's a really good volleyball photographer, and that's not just a proud Dad talking! She's the most coach-able person I've ever dealt with.)

Mostly, I've been waiting for technology to reach a point where the services I offer are no longer in demand to the level where they can pay for my living. I'm honestly surprised it hasn't happened yet. I have various ideas of how to stay relevant and, of course, as technology improves on the consumer end, it also improves on our end - we just have to keep pushing our skills so that we can deliver things customers can't get on their phones or their now very good lower end digital cameras. So far it's worked!

As for franchising - I've been asked a number of times over the years (mostly in the 2003 - 2010 time period, interest in event photography as a profession died down a lot after that time) about franchising, but it's never something I've looked into much. Seems like an awful lot of work! And, while the money can be pretty decent in this line of work, I don't know that it's so good that it covers paying what people need to cover their living, plus franchise costs, etc. It's worked well for me because I live a simple, low overhead life.

I've considered licensing the software - but I really don't want to be a software company. I worked for one in the late 90s. Besides, in my experience, photographers are notorious cheapskates about a lot of things and I don't know that there are enough licensees out there willing to pay enough to support development as a software company.

So I've settled on just trying to be really, really, really good at what we do.

At this point, it looks like when I feel I've reached the point I'm done, I'll tear down the booth one last time, pack it up and wave goodbye.

Of course, if a compelling idea comes along, I could always change my mind! I don't want to be close-minded to opportunities!

Micheal

 

[Timzee]

My forays into hiring photographers I didn't train myself weren't great (and not all of the photographers I have trained worked out either - this gig tends to chew them up and spit them out).

Ah yes, therein lies perhaps the biggest challenge once all the infrastructure is in place? I can well imagine eager wannabees chafing at the bit to sign on as photographers, only to realize that wow-- this is hard WORK!

In any event (pun intended) that's a fantastic looking setup! Congrats and best of luck going forward.

 

[360iViews]

Wow! You took this beyond next level. Amazing!

There was a time, maybe 15 years ago when I thought I might want to scale my operation. After moving to NC from NM in 2002, where I was involved with another company that shot big sports events, I built my business over the next 3-5 years. As I gained market foothold, I watched my consumer and technology (think affordability) change to the point where I felt I should keep the business at a manageable level that would allow me to pick and choose my leagues and events.

By far the greatest struggle I had was finding quality and trainable photographers that would last. Other than my oldest son and maybe one other guy, I could never find a go-to. I never asked for much, other than "Show up and shoot" at the basic minimum I required. How hard is it to shoot a kid in front of a backdrop with preset focus for 10 feet at F8? Amazing how some managed to screw up images - too many stories and too many disgruntled customers. Then there were the customers...OMG the parents who could not follow the simplest directions: Who the hell writes and signs checks in red or highlighted inks? or "Do I really have to pay for shipping?". I finally got fed up with the bravo Sierra and closed that business in 2018, after determining that the T&I/Event stuff was a young man's game, and having turned 50 that year, I just did not have the patience. Bat-crap crazy realtors and bridezillas are way easier to manage than that. So, good on ya'!

 

[Micheal Hall]

Thanks Timzee!

Yeah, finding photographers is a challenge, for sure.

Our most recent addition, started with us maybe six or seven years ago was a cocky 28 year old when I first had him come out. When I initially pitched him the idea of photographing with us, he literally said - "Oh, I could do that - easy!" (More than once, in fact).

At lunch after his first training shoot - no pressure, no customers, no booth, no expectations - he admitted, "I realized about 10 minutes in that that's not easy and I couldn't do it! It's a lot harder than I expected!"

But he dug in and really developed into a solid volleyball photographer. Only to land a cushy job with the state that left him no time to photograph with u s. (Which is good for him, all things considered, just darned inconvenient for us!)

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Micheal

 

[Micheal Hall]

Thanks 360iViews! We've put a lot of work into our entire experience.

Early only when I was getting this started in earnest (2001) I was lucky to fall into the relationships I have now that we've kept going for nearly 20 years. We've been able to grow with the sport. I've also been lucky in that I have a large, close family - just about all of whom have "done time" with me. Only my sister dodged that bullet - all four of my brothers, both of my parents, my daughter, one of my uncles, two of my cousins - have all come out to help extensively. (My father and my older brother for 19 and 17 years respectively). Even my ex-wife (who at that point was already my ex for nearly 10 years), her sister, her sister's ex-husband, and now one of their daughters who's a freshman in college have all been out to help (and paid for it of course!) That why I warn people who come out that when they work with us, they become a part of the family.

Over the years I've also hired from the sport itself - I've hired a number of former athletes that I've met on the "circuit" who were regular customers and had aged out of the sport and moved on to college. (None of the former athletes I've hired have worked out as photographers - they run out of gas 1/2 way through the day - I've never understood how that happens!)

I've had my misfires - photographers who misrepresented their qualifications, booth staff that just couldn't manage the grind that days can be - but, all in all, I've been really lucky.


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Micheal