My first 5K photo shoot

peak10

Hi,
I've been a smugmugger for awhile and am focusing on the business portion presently. I am working with a charity who asked me to be the photographer for a 5K race that is coming up Saturday. It's my first major event and my name will be on the race shirts so it's a big break for me!

From my personal race experience, the race photos are always up for sale to the runners. I never buy mine, but maybe this time someone will want theirs and I want to be fully ready.

Since its just me and I don't plan on sending every participant their own personal link, I created a seperate gallery on my Smugmug site and will post the photos there for purchase. An added benefit is it will also bring people to my photography site so they can see my other work.

Does anyone have suggestions or comments on the success of this approach?

Thank you,
Philip

www.peakreflectionsphotography.com

Sam

I have a couple of thoughts on this.

First I didn't see any sports or other images that involve movement or tracking. My questions here would center around the technical. Do you have adequate camera / lens / gear / experience for this type of photography? Also note expect to shoot a ton (thousands) of images.

Now as to sales. You must have a way to inform every competitor of your photography, that the images will be available for purchase, and where to locate their images. You can not rely on them making the connection simply from your name on a t-shirt. Perhaps print up a flyer and include it in the race package. When on course taking the photos shout at the runners to look at you smile and wave. You want happy engaged images, not people slogging along with their heads down.

Most pro event companies also have software that allows participants to sort on bib numbers. Not having this, (which is completely understandable) will force participants to wade through a lot of images.

Sam

johng

You're going to need to tag the images and provide directions on how to search. No one is going to go through page-after-page of photos of other runners. Having said that - expect the vast majority of participants to be just like you are - they just don't value a photo of them running enough to actually buy one. Especially not on-line after the fact. Then you have the issue of the couple people that want to buy and you didn't capture a photo of them. Please let us know how this goes. I just haven't heard many success stories covering small races like this. But tagging will be crucial to any success.