Question about purchases

ladykassie

This is just a wild cloud question..
Hopefully things will be rocking for me next year with doing some photography and this is the question I need some answers and guidance to

I do some shooting at the high school football game, I have some great shots that I think the parents would love to have, even the kids! So, how would I go about this to let the parents know that they can have prints of there kids in action.
* contact the sports coach?
* gallery would be password protect, since I have no model releases from anyone to sell any prints to the public?

Thank you for any suggestions
~alice

donek

First, you don't need model releases to post them in a public manner, just if they are going to be used in a commercial fashion (advertisement, etc.) It's really the advertisers responsibility to ensure a photo has a release. Although if you plan on going that route, you make selling the image for such purposes easier if you obtain the release.

You'd probably need permission from the athletic director to gain field access.

In my experience, highschool kids and parents aren't all that likely to pay for images. They did that when their kids were younger. The highschool kids are more likely to steal the image and post in on the facebook/myspace page than buy it. They rarely care if it has a watermark on it and screen capture software is free. You may be a brilliant salesperson (unlike me) and make lots of money, but you'll have to work it.

David Evertsen

ladykassie wrote:

This is just a wild cloud question..
Hopefully things will be rocking for me next year with doing some photography and this is the question I need some answers and guidance to

I do some shooting at the high school football game, I have some great shots that I think the parents would love to have, even the kids! So, how would I go about this to let the parents know that they can have prints of there kids in action.
* contact the sports coach?
* gallery would be password protect, since I have no model releases from anyone to sell any prints to the public?

Thank you for any suggestions
~alice

To be honest there are a million threads all over the web and even the sports forum answering this question. You have to know your customer and how committed they are to their sport and how committed their parents are. You will not get rich shooting HS sports but you will get better, it is all about marketing and knowing your customers.

InstantPic

Talk to the parents, coaches, hand out cards, network network, it takes time to build up momentum, keep going, keep posting..
one thing I have found out is sometimes people are not concerned with a specific sport till after the season is over, when they are hunting for memories... so if you have the photos/video up, and available make sure they know before the season is over to possibly make the post season sales.
also allot of HS teams do special things for the seniors, and they are usually willing to pay for them, could be anything from collages to special prints/slide show.
Also If using SmugMug they have a great gallery invite/email setup so get peoples emails if possible... the easier you make it for them the easier they will spend their money.