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Things are Looking Up!
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Registered Users Posts: 1,015 Major grins
[FONT="]I have been very much in 2 minds about the event work for a while but had a couple of wins of late I'm pretty pleased with.
This morning I got an email from a lady that booked me to do a big end of year championships this weekend, forwarding my details on to another organiser of a world cup qualifier event. She was after contact details of "the guy with the fantastic setup" she saw at another event earlier in the year.
I rang her and she booked me to cover this important and very large event which I'm well pleased with. I contacted these organisers about last years event but was told they had someone that did all their events and had been for some time.
As one does, I looked this person up and found their work to be pretty ordinary, but also discovered as an ex rider, she had plenty of connections within this group and obviously that's the important thing.
I saw this years event being promoted but didn't bother chasing it again this year. I was very well pleased to see the email request for us to cover this years event. For all I know, maybe the other shooter is sick or on holiday and it could be a one off but I’ll choose to believe that the work and effort I have put into this is being recognised as something valuable and beneficial to the event organisers and competitors.
At worst, this is an opportunity to show what we can do and make it harder for the competition to get back in. This organiser does a few things I was interested in last season so hopefully I can get on the "preferred Supplier" list and cover the events next year.
I also had an organiser ring me a few weeks ago about covering a state event and another for a championships this weekend.
It's great to have people ringing you to cover events rather than having to chase them all yourself.
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This morning I got an email from a lady that booked me to do a big end of year championships this weekend, forwarding my details on to another organiser of a world cup qualifier event. She was after contact details of "the guy with the fantastic setup" she saw at another event earlier in the year.
I rang her and she booked me to cover this important and very large event which I'm well pleased with. I contacted these organisers about last years event but was told they had someone that did all their events and had been for some time.
As one does, I looked this person up and found their work to be pretty ordinary, but also discovered as an ex rider, she had plenty of connections within this group and obviously that's the important thing.
I saw this years event being promoted but didn't bother chasing it again this year. I was very well pleased to see the email request for us to cover this years event. For all I know, maybe the other shooter is sick or on holiday and it could be a one off but I’ll choose to believe that the work and effort I have put into this is being recognised as something valuable and beneficial to the event organisers and competitors.
At worst, this is an opportunity to show what we can do and make it harder for the competition to get back in. This organiser does a few things I was interested in last season so hopefully I can get on the "preferred Supplier" list and cover the events next year.
I also had an organiser ring me a few weeks ago about covering a state event and another for a championships this weekend.
It's great to have people ringing you to cover events rather than having to chase them all yourself.
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Lance.
http://www.imagesbyceci.com
http://www.facebook.com/ImagesByCeci
Picadilly, NB, Canada
Getting cancelled is certainly on the card with these. It's been raining the last week here and predicted to rain all next week. I don't think it will take much more rain to have these canned and if it rains tomorrow, i'd be pretty sure I will get a last minute phone call as well.
Lot to be said for indoor events!
All true....but indeed the phone ringing is tits!
Yeah, I'm happy about that.
Bit of an achievement these days in the photo game when you don't advertise.
And when they ring, they ring to book, not enquire or ask prices!
Perfect!
Reading here about the inroads the snap happy ameteurs are making into the Photo biz, it makes me thankful I got into this line of work. That said, the difficulty of people doing their own pics was also a specific reason I did get into it.
Yeah, there are heaps of people with camera's standing around at events but I have found that many of these people are good customers. My best customer has a pile of gear but his daughter complains he always cuts her head off. I wonder now if seeing people with their own camera's isn't a great thing?
It at least shows they are wanting pics and having seen what most of them are getting, it's only an assett to me. If I say so myself with no modesty whatso ever, We are really nailing the shots now for the most part and with the occasional crop, the work we are producing i'm very happy with.... Finally!
While lots of other area's of photography are being eroded, event work is specialised enough to have a resilience to that. The danger is from the snap and post online brigade of which I have already seen an increase in, but having now won over an organiser from that competition, hopefully the difference in the approaches will lead to more and more profitable work.
I'm also trying to get a prepaid business model up and running and I have had good feedback on that from the few feelers I have put out there which is also encouraging. The organiser that just booked me has several events that would be perfect for this next year and they are far enough away that I still have time to sell it to her with a bit of luck.
It's a bit never ending this event game, like a mate says about another interest of ours, It's a journey that never ends.
I had trouble last weekend at the event I did with the Vstations crashing and figured out I just have too many running now and getting hit to hard for my present system to cope with. Now it's onto setting up a proper server to handle the workflow of getting the pics up to the vstations and possibly a second ( or 3rd) wireless router as well so I can split the number of stations each one has to handle. I'm trying to work out the technicalities on thses muthers of servers I was given a while back that weigh as much as an average man. I'm thinking I'll get something smaller to put in the trailer but once I figure it all out, I'll have enough server power to do any number of Vstations I want. Literally!
The IT side is getting serious.
As well as that, I have my eye on a bigger trailer and I'll know tonight if that's a go or not. When I told the boss, she was like " WTF are you going to do with 3 trailers?" being that I already have 2 that I use for different event types. This one will cover all with a few mods and i'll have plenty of money on the change over from the cost of the new one and what i'll get for the old ones. Better make sure I spend some of that On a nice Dinner and a present for "She whom must be obeyed" I think.
See if that plan comes off or not.
If it dose, next plan would be to look at a more heavy duty and larger tent for the Vstations and then a bunch of laptops so I can set the circus up without being buggerd before I take a single pic.
Does anyone recall me saying I was looking to get out of this game?
Perhaps that's the plan I really should stick to!!!
Got there to steady rain and immeadiately noticed the carpark was about half of what i would havve expected and had seen before... and this was supposed to be the biggest event ever held with this club/ venue.
Anyway, the rain held up till lunchtime making everything soggy, humid and slow. I have never seen so much mud mixed with horse do da's so thick or deep or would have ever seen myself wading around in it all day. Everything was squelchy bogg and i had mud all over me in not time.
Haven't had that much fun since I was a little kid!
Unfortunately the scratchings were extensive as a lot of people didn't shoe, and a lot of people did one round and went home. And the weather and heat made everything slow.
The arena wasn't holding up too well . The main ring was getting chopped badly and at about 1:30 one of the ex olympic riders who is still well known in the sport here gave the head organiser a bit of what for and refused to run her round till one set of jumps was moved to fresh ground.
There was a committe meeting to decide if the event would go ahead tomorrow or be postponed for 2 weeks. As expected, it was decided very quickly that the event would run but the consensus around the riders seemed to be that it should have been cancelled but wasn't because the club would loose money.
It was raining steadily when I left and I fully expect to go back there tomorrow to pack up the trailer and just bring it back home. I spoke to one lady from the country who told me she got out to the grounds at daybreak and rang her driver that was bringing her horse from the country and told him to turn round and take the horse back home even though he was only 90 min away.
Given I have had trouble with the computers keeping up with demand, we tried a stop gap measure and ran half the Vstations off the network and the other half we loaded the album files from a USB onto the HDD and ran them direct. Worked pretty well. My daughter was asking people what they were wanting to see and directed the people who wanted to see the latest events to the networked machines and the people that were after earlier events to the preloaded ones.
We also loaded the pics from the midyear event and got a few sales on that. Ii think next season I'll preload the machines with all last years and the previous events files and run them locally and just have that days pics coming off the server.
I had the kids put flyers under all the car windows or in the floats in the carpark so i'll see how online sales go. If ewver it's going to work, this will be the time.
One interesting thing happened was that a couple of shooters came up in the morning and introduced themselves. Seems they were sent but someone else who covers the event ( that we didn't know about) and was invited by the organiser. They saw my setup and said no use us being here and watched the rounds for a bit then left. I think they were seceretly very happy to go back home to a warm dry house.
A bit later, I saw the shooter they were supposedly working for there.
I have to say, she really makes me scratch my head. She sits herself on a seat in the middle of 2 rings with her feet up on the fence with apparently little regard for getting the best angles or shots. She fires off about 6 shots of every fence as the rider goes across and then chimps and deletes about 5 of the 6.
She is using really basic gear and a kit type not too long lens so is pretty restricted on what she can get. I just cannot see how she is making any money from her work but then again, seeing the amount of socialising she did and knowing she is a rider/ instructor, I don't think the $ are what shes really interested in.
I found out she is the shooter that normall does the event I was invited to cover next week and has also been asked/ invited/ given permission to cover it. Frankly, I could care less.
She only does online and having looked at her work and seen the way she shoots, I think if anything she will only be a help to my sales.
From what I was told by everyone that the subject came up with ( at least 20 people) next weekends event is going to be HUGE so we'll really need our game faces on.
Then again, having done 1300 Cheerleaders in a single 12+ hour day, I think 400 riders over 3 days will be bit of a walk in the park by comparison.
Question will be how the weather goes this week. It's predicted to rain non stop for the next 7 days. The venue is the 2000 Olympic site so it will be interesting to see how it holds up to the weather.
Our show season is over and it's winter here - although on the East Coast you'd not know it. It's +10 and pouring rain (unusual).
In January we have our annual mid-winter "January Thaw" trade show for the horsey community in the region. It will be another opportunity for me to promote my pre-booking packages. It took a while to 'educate' the dressage circuit about that - but toward the end of the season it really took off. Perhaps this year it will truly pick up.
Without a crew (i.e. family with kids) to work with me, doing what you do is so out of the question. But, you never know what opportunities may arise, right?
Good luck next week-end.
http://www.imagesbyceci.com
http://www.facebook.com/ImagesByCeci
Picadilly, NB, Canada
1 single sale all day. Would have been one thing if people came to look and decided my pics were crap but they didn't even get that far. My son said we had about 10 people look all day.
Of course I have had trouble trying to get the pics uploaded with one thing after another so 24 hours later I still only have half a gallery up. I have had one call and 3 emails about the pics though which I spose is good in that people are looking for them.
As for the shocking sales, I think the weather just had everyone wanting to go home really. It really should have been cancelled but when it wasn't it was run for a shot at the $$ or go home and It was Stinking hot, pouring rain and everyone had enough of slushing around in the mud.
I went out into the main arena on Sunday before the grand Prix and I was amazed at the conditions. there were holes in the ground a foot deep and even me walking on the ground made it give way with every step. I'm pretty sure the weight loading of a horses hoof would be many times the weight loading of my foot so they must have been sinking everywhere.
Still waiting on the weather to see how that goes.
Today I added an annexe to the front of my trailer.
I'm now even better prepared for rain or heat!
Geez Snow, it seems like only yesterday we were talking about your Thaw show and here it is again!
I was looking through some pics the other night when I came home and found shots I did at the end of year champs from 2009 that I just did this weekend. There was a shot of my son in front of the trailer holding the camera and I set up the same shot again exactly 1 year later.
Same place, New camera but same trailer although with a lot more Vstations and other things that made interesting comparisons.
One comparison was the fact the grounds looked like a desert last year, a complete contrast to this time.
The other thing I remember us talking about not so long ago was me doing events in 35o+ heat and you saying it was -30 where you are.
Still telling people about that!
I'm lucky to have the Slave labour but I can see that next year will be about the last of that. My son will be 16 in 6 months time and he's already fed up with events and i can't see him going along with them for much longer especially as he gets older and wants more freedom.
That and the last weekend has once again motivated me back toward the Corporate stuff although for some reason I do not know myself, I still have a thing for the horse work.
I don't particularly like horses, I have only just worked out the head is the end you want to photograph, I get up early in the morning and feel sick as hell because it interferes with the medication i'm on, I work like a dog often for not enough return and I'm stuffed at least monday and still recovering Tuesday from the weekend and the kids give me grief over doing them.
Maybe it's just the effort I have put in to get this far I don't want to give up on and if the corporate stuff takes off, I won't be bothered with events..... Except if I hook some on the pre paid concept i'm pushing atm.
Just a small one but it was enough to remind me and motivate me of the contrast between on spec and gauranteed sales.
For the next 3 days I'm out covering the world cup. Very nice upmarket Venue but it will either be stinking hot, raining or both and I think my chances of decent profit are slim.
Very slim.
Today I cruised around in a golf cart for a couple of hours refusing about a dozen offers of beers before 10 am, came back and sat in airconditioned comfort for a couple more hours sipping a cool drink and then had luch with the guests and got to have my ego throughly massaged while they oohed and ahhed over the pics.
The highlight of the day was when one of the organisers said to a long time client / friend, " Geez, you guys are more excited with the Photos than the the golf day day itself".
It was said half in jest and half in a measure of indignation.
The other highlight was that they were not impressed the golf club gave me a hard time and wouldn't let me in early to set up and then after telling me where I could, had a go at me for the amount of equipment I had.
Already i have been asked to keep an eye out for a place I can reccommend that will be more accomodating to what I need when i cover next years event for them. I suggested we find a place that has a projector so we can play the slide show of the day that everyone got to take home with them and they were real keen on that as they said they are going to need something good in the way of photos to top what they got today.
Things have not been easy lately on a number of fronts and I have to say this was a well needed pat on the back to keep me going.
Yesterday I got asked to do another big youth show in June which would be OK for onspec sales but I'm going to push the pre paid model hard and see if I can get that to fly. Being the event it is and the lead time, I may have a chance.
I also met some event centre managers today and have tentative appointements to go see them to discuss them refering me to the different organisations that hire their facilities. One of the people that was most interested that I was told was just a friend of one of the players there to make up the numbers for someone that pulled out, works for a major airline and apparently is pretty well up the food chain.
Glad I had a good chat to him and answered all his questions!
So, for the next 3 days I don't know how things are going to look at the end except that I'm going to be plenty tired on monday and have a busy week of tying up loose ends before christmas.
Hopefully I'll have something good to report but we'll see.
It's definately an adventure this Event and photography game.
Event photography is like aging - not for the faint of heart
http://www.imagesbyceci.com
http://www.facebook.com/ImagesByCeci
Picadilly, NB, Canada
3 very hard days work and nothing to show for it in my pocket.
Today I have felt like i would totally expect if I had been hit by a car or had some heavy fall on me. I ache all over and am exhausted.
Thankfully the sun came out but then it was very hot and it seemed impossible to drink enough liquids.
For what it was worth, which dosen't seem much at all at this time, we got some really excellet shots. One thing that dawned on me was what , from my POV as a photographer, a dead end sport this is to try and make a quid from.
This was the most prestigious event of it's type for this sport in the country but for the major event I would guess there were less than 300 specatators for it and of cours most of them were riders from the lower classes or those that didn't make it. Outside interest is minimal to non existant.
It turned out the regular shooter they use was there.
I have to say I was damned amazed with what I saw. On the saturday she had a run in with my wife because my wife was standing in her way on the edge of the massive arena. The thing was, my wife was in her way because the tother shooter wanted to sit/ lie on the grass and wouldn't move. She did that most of the time. We all moved along the edge of the arena back and forth to line up on different jumps but this other one, resplindent in her best casual shorts, t shirt and thongs perfect for a day at the beach, did more sitting and lying around than anything else.
I have to say I was really stunned at her lack of professionalism and obvios ineptitude for what she was doing. I could see the angles she was getting on the jumps and they were far from good and the way she would just rely on the camera taking multiple shots instead of timing to get the peak action was really surprising.
She told my wife she was there to get promo shots for the organisers ( and why they couldn't ask me to do that i'll never know) but adding to my amazement was the way she stood off to the side during presentations with the happy snappers ( and even let them get best position) and just tried to grab whatever she could rather than get in and arrage people to create the money pics that she was there to capture.
Before long, the sponsors were coming up to us and asking us to do the promo pics and I made some good contacts there. I made sure to burn disks of the pics I took and give them to the respective sponsors in the proper Dvd covers with the printed slicks with my blurb on the back. that obviously blew a few of them away.
I got the impression despite my initial satisfaction and pride that we were there to pad the event out and were somewhat being used by the promoters. I fifured if I was right or wrong that we would do a top job on the pics and If i was right I would turn it back on them by showing what a good job we could do and If i was wrong and they did want us there, I'd set a standard that their other shooter would never come near and get ourselves invited back to the other events they promote.
There is really only one youth event I would be interested in doing and I would be doing it on my terms or not at all. With events like this one, while they sound all prestigious and impressive, there simply isn't any money in them for us.
I can now tell potential clients I have photographed a world Cup qualifier.
In the back of my mind I know I'm a heck of a lot better off photographing 10 YO begginners at a Rural Pony Club.
One Highlight was watching my Son help me shoot the main event. I sent him out into the Middle of the arena and he got some really excellent shots that I was really impressed with . He was not at all well and right to the point we started, I was wondering if I should ditch the event and take him to the hospital. Funny enough, he came good when he started shooting the main event and felt much better till we got back to the trailer and the excitement subsided. He just had a stomach bug but I was concerned it was more serious but when we had him checked out he was fine.
I primed him up what to do at the presentations and he really shot like a pro. He got in there, directed and arranged people even after I had set them up because there was things he wasn't happy with and shot good, clean money shots while the other photographer stood off to the sideline and blazed away shooting pics of the people looking in the other direction.
If I am asked to do one of these events again it will definately be on a prepaid basis of some sort. I don't believe for a minute the promoters will come at that when they can get free pics from other shooters but at least now I have shown them the difference between the standard of the pic they will get from me and others.
Maybe, just maybe, I made enough of an impression on the other sponsors to add some weight to my involvement as well.
I'm uploading the pics to the net now so maybe with a major miracle we'll cover our food costs for the weekend.
See what happens.