Event work
fredjclaus
Registered Users Posts: 759 Major grins
Did you ever have one of those days when people ask you to do things you don't normally do? I will try just about any form of photography but my main bread and butter is event photography. Recently I had a call from someone who say my name on an event photography listing site. He wants me to photograph a horse show for the local 4H and sell copies of the prints to the parents. That's great but I don't have the set up people normally have for viewing and ordering on the spot.
Has anyone had any luck with pre-selling event CD's with all the pictures on them and mailing them to the parents?
I'd love to do more of this, but there just is not a large call for that form of event photography in my area yet.
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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=43.087644,-78.939831
Has anyone had any luck with pre-selling event CD's with all the pictures on them and mailing them to the parents?
I'd love to do more of this, but there just is not a large call for that form of event photography in my area yet.
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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=43.087644,-78.939831
Fred J Claus
Commercial Photographer
http://www.FredJClaus.com
http://www.Fredjclaus.com/originals
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Commercial Photographer
http://www.FredJClaus.com
http://www.Fredjclaus.com/originals
Save on your own SmugMug account. Just enter Coupon code i2J0HIOcEElwI at checkout
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Comments
Pre-selling is THE way to go for this type of work.
Nothing like getting your money up front so you know your efforts are worthwhile.
The beauty of preselling to 100% of the competitors is you can make your price much lower than you would on spec which makes the disks much better value for the parents and still very profitable for yourself. Depending on the numbers of competitors and what you want from the deal, you could look at anything from $10-20 for the disk.
If you shooting 50 kids, thats a good day from this type of work and you don't have the overheads of doing onsite sales or the problems and low returns of online.
My suggestion would be to just give the the full res images with your tasteful watermark on them ( name and phone or website) and encourage them to print them off, email them, face space them or whatever. Forget about all the crap people go on with about people getting a bad print from costco or somewhere and ruining your reputation and all that complete and utter garbage, it never happens and if it did, there would be a bunch of people telling anyone that complained that thier shots were fine so it would be obvious where the fault was.
You may like to consider investing in some extra CD burners as well. In doing this type of thing I built myself a Disk duplicating tower out of an old P$ machine I threw a bit of RAM at, put in an accessory card to give me 8 extra SATA ports and cut an old case to fit in some more burners and stuck the ones I couldn't fit on top of the machine for good measure.
Being able to burn 8 disks at a time is just sooooo much easier and less frustrating than doing them individually. Wven if you just do 5, it's still a big time saver. Just use Nero as your burning program and tick the " Use multiple burners". the rest is as straightforward as burning one disk.
I printed the disks on my inkjet and made up a good image for them with my details and the event name and a pic therefrom and bought some cheap Proper DVD covers than I also made up a slick for and put a sales pitch on the back of. that has got me 2 jobs I know of so far and very worth while.
You need to do it on an all in basis otherwise you will get 10 orders from 100 competitors and they will copy them themselves or you will have to edit the shots to specific classes etc which is a huge pain and time waster. If you can do it that everyone gets all the pics and you just take out the blookers, batch them with your watermark and burn, your laughing.
When I do this I set my 7D to 8mp and I can get over 600 images on a disk which is generally adequate fro anything I do. If you need more images, you could set your cam to high compression.
By all means give the pre-paid a go Fred. It is absoloutley the best way to do any event work.
http://www.imagesbyceci.com
http://www.facebook.com/ImagesByCeci
Picadilly, NB, Canada
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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=42.993007,-78.962153
Commercial Photographer
http://www.FredJClaus.com
http://www.Fredjclaus.com/originals
Save on your own SmugMug account. Just enter Coupon code i2J0HIOcEElwI at checkout
Hi. I have done a lot of horse shows, 4-H and other agricultural events. I've modified my way of doing things. On-line ordering is very, very slow. So now what I do is a pre-order system. The client pays me a fee to take the photos and I have three different packages. Included in the package is a credit toward the costs of any prints they order AND they get a digital low res copy of any image from which they order a print, it is lightly and discretely watermarked and may be used on Facebook or any other way they want. So far this seems to be working the best of what I've tried so far. Like you I have neither the funds nor the family resources to set up on site printing.
I have found, however, that having someone with me to take on site orders also works well.
Let us know how you make out.:D
http://www.imagesbyceci.com
http://www.facebook.com/ImagesByCeci
Picadilly, NB, Canada
So you have seen my setup Fred??
Snows method is the second best approach. Better to Pre-sell to everyone there but if you can't, then pre-sell to as many of the riders as you can.
Make it clear, no payment, no pictures taken.
Work with the organisers to get the booking BEFORE the event as much as possible and get the word out. Pre selling is a great way to get the best results and saves you being taken away from the photography on the day.
Better than what I do and a lot less overheads and equipment required.
The suggestion of one dropoff is also a good one. Postage costs can add up severely when sending out bulk items.
http://www.imagesbyceci.com
http://www.facebook.com/ImagesByCeci
Picadilly, NB, Canada
Obviously the person covering the event can use their own discretion as to the watermarking. Perhaps I used the wrong term in that I should have said signature as in a small, discreet marking of the shooters name rather than something plastered across the image.
I don't do it but is seems a lot of people do for this type of thing.
If I were doing faceache images, I would definately do the same as Snow.
As I said, individual shooters would use their own discrection as to what suits them as there are no hard and fast rules in this.
Have you made any progress with this Fred?
This is what I was referring to. I wouldn't want images of my kid with someone's "tasteful watermark" or anything else on them, especially if I am printing them. I shouldn't have to be your advertising company.
Agree with the second part though.
Here's the challenge in your situation: it's going to be tough to get people to pay you in advance when they haven't seen a copy of your related work. So for a single event and your first time doing it, you may have a difficult time generating a lot of interest. Pre-orders tend to work better when you're established and you can have the event send out your info to participants ahead of time and if you have an on-site presence with finished products on display. Expecting people to blindly give you money with no demonstration of related work experience is likely to result in fairly poor sales. No matter what the approach you use, without a product to advertise and without prior marketing of that product you're not going to get a lot of takers. But it all starts with having a product. If this is your first horse show, you don't have a product to advertise. Which can result in a lot of hours for little to no pay.
Oops. Sorry. Misunderstood.
http://www.imagesbyceci.com
http://www.facebook.com/ImagesByCeci
Picadilly, NB, Canada
John I see where you are coming from but I can only say my experience has been quite different.
I have taken on a number of new sports/ events over the last couple of years and had no trouble with sales and never shown a thing. I sold nearl $5K worth of Videos at one event last year and I had never covered the sport before let alone was known to the competitirs/ parents but they bought very well.
I did another Style of event a couple of months back and sold heaps images DVD's sight unseen there as well. We had Vstations to set up but due to the event being the first one the organisers had done and them giving us some underestimated info, we all got taken by surprise and didn't get time to set the Vstations up. In the end people were just buying on spec so they never made it out of the truck.
I have also booked an amazing number of wedding without showing the people a single picture. Some of these were referals from event work or other totally non related photography other than weddings.
I find that a lot of people will automatically assume if you are the " Professional" photographer, that you know what your doing and can take a decent pic.
That said, I also believe that your confidence and sales ability comes into it as well, probably more for some things than others.
I think that if fred were to work with the rganisers and get something on their website or in newsletter/ email to the riders saying he will be there and shots will only be taken through pre-booking, he would do OK. I think the Pre-sale pre-sales
The way I see it, Fred has 2 options.
He can try for the pre-booked sales where he shoots only the people that pay up front or he can go the shotgun approach and try to cover as many as possible and sell online.
Both have risks and drawbacks. I suppose the thing for Fred is he has to take a gamble on which horse to back to get the best return and which one has the lowest risks for his circumstances.
Snow is in a better position than I to comment on the risks and complications of going the pre-booked route and i think the online option is pretty well known overall.
I would say with online, The key there is getting your site where the pics will be known and [people to visit the site.
From there the complications really start!
Before I went the presell route, I did the shotgun shoot with online galleries and sales. I got some sales and did get known on the circuit. I set up a booth with large photos and order forms so people could see my work. I also donated gift certificates valued at $250 to be given away as prizes. Basically, I spent a couple of years getting known so that I could then switch to the prebook, prepay model.
http://www.imagesbyceci.com
http://www.facebook.com/ImagesByCeci
Picadilly, NB, Canada
Lance.
There is an offer worth taking up!
I have tried this with a few shooters in other markets to me. So far no one has taken me up on the idea. I did have one older gentleman come to see my setup and find out about it as he had never seen an onsite approach before but told me he thought What I was doing was way too advanced and elaborate for the people he dealt with.
Maybe he was right but I really thought we both could have been taking home more money than he was taking home on his own by far. His photography was fantastic but his sales method of one proofsheet per 20 pics a few weeks after the event with posting order forms to him was straight out of the 80's.
He had large a,ounts of potential clients in an expensive sport, many whom traveled long distances and high end events. I reckon we could have killed it but neve got to find out.