Do you charge for photos at a non profit event?

photodad1

I will be taking action photos of a non profit sports event in the near future. I will not be charging for my time taking the actual photos, however, how do I go about charging for prints of the event? I have a SmugMug Pro account and can set my own prices. Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

jmphotocraft

I have, carefully. But this is a moot question because you already missed your opportunity. You will not sell enough photos after the event to make a significant amount of money anyway, so you may as well give them away. This is not a comment on the quality of your photos, this is just how it is.

Sure, put a price on prints, but don't be a d.b. and obscure the images with ugly watermarks. Put a tasteful logo with url in the corner and don't disable right-clicks. Pray that the participants use them on Facebook.

Only ways I can imagine to maybe make a little money off a non-profit event are 1, sell on-site and advertise that the proceeds benefit the cause - at least half your profits. 2, charge the organizer a discounted fee - put a line item on the bill for your normal fee and another line item for the discount. You can then take that discount as a tax write-off. I've done 2.

photodad1

I will be to asking the organizer to have my logo posted on their website and direct it to my website so the participants can view and hopefully buy prints.

idiotabroad

Agree with Jack, no one buys anything at a non profit event, charity, unless profits go toward it. I've done my share of free events and got walked on each time. Best advice is only do the ones that are near and dear to your heart, that way you don't feel used and abused.

jmphotocraft

photodad1 wrote: »

I will be to asking the organizer to have my logo posted on their website and direct it to my website so the participants can view and hopefully buy prints.

Not gonna happen.

Well, unless there is already an existing culture of buying photos from this event, which you have had the good fortune to come into.

Again, treat this as a loss-leader, hope that your photos will get used on Facebook, and present them accordingly. You might get a few family portrait or senior portrait sessions out of it. Or another event.

jmphotocraft

Glort wrote: »

I also find it amazing that people still say that doing onsite printing and sales is difficult, expensive or complicated. Thats really outdated and behind the times thinking.
You can do onsite printing with any laptop 5 yo and under and the software that comes with the printer very comfortably. They make this sort of thing real simple now but I never cease to be amazed how people seem to fail to take advantage of how simple easy, cheap and profitable this is.
There is no way I'd do any event I couldn't do onsite sales even if not printing.

I would think in order to do on-site printing you would need a bare minimum of 3 view stations and 2-3 printers, and you would need to stop shooting at some point during the event and prepare the images for the view stations. And having an assistant would be ideal. I have seen a guy doing this at a racetrack and making a killing, but he has all the gear, and the schedule of the day lends itself to stopping shooting in the early afternoon. I don't think a two hour sports event fits this model.

jmphotocraft

I appreciate all that insight. You should write a book. No, really. I will probably get into this line of work after the kids are out of college - in ~15 years, or when I retire. For now it's software engineering and photography on the side. I think photodad is in a similar boat. My photography pays for my gear and a vacation and/or toy for the family. I'm thrilled with that.

I'm wondering why you got out of events and what you are doing now?

A 2 hour sports event would be a single game/match. I have to cover my league one game at a time. At the end of the season it's a nice chunk of change. With this model, pre-paid orders are the only way to fly.

mercphoto

As for 2 hour events, I have never heard of such a thing here, are there many like that in the US?

Back in 2006 I started to work shooting youth Football here in Austin (the Pop Warner Leauge). Young kids, grade school. The game is over in about 40-45 minutes or so. After that the parents and kids leave. THEY WILL NOT STICK AROUND FOR A PHOTO BOOTH. Its off to Dairy Queen at this point. Online selling is the only option here. The guy I was working with (before I quickly learned I hate football and quit shooting it) made his living doing this. He was able to do this because he also shoot college and professional sports, and made those kids look like professional players. He also had a knack for collages with very good graphics and layouts.

jmphotocraft

Glort wrote: »

I take it you would do more than one game at a time though.

In my experience it's not good for one shooter to cover more than one game at the same time. It's possible to do it in T-ball and AA, where every player gets to bat every inning. You do T&I for two teams before their game, shoot action for half the game, then go over to the other field and shoot action for half the game and do T&I of those two teams after the game. But even then some kids will get shortchanged on action photos.

As far as online sales go, in the context of these sports/ events that no one will look at onsite pics or are 2 hours jobs, what sort of REAL order values do people get from them?
I read chapter and verse about how people can't make any decent returns with online sports pics ( and it seems hard enough with onsite as well) and this gels with my own experience.

Frankly I find it hard to believe that there is any decent money to be made ( which would equate to even $500 a day rather than $2 an hour ) from online sales. The smaller ( and faster ) the event, the less potential clients and sales are there to be made but fixed time and costs are going to be the same making the returns effectively worse.

I just can't see anything other than tiddly wink money being there for online but I'd be very interested to hear some Current real world experiences with it.

When I was doing it online and on-spec, the first year I did ok because there was a pre-existing culture of having photos taken in Little League, and people were impressed with the action shots, which had never been done before. It wasn't a ton of money per team, but times 45 teams it was enough for a family vacation to Jamaica.

By the third year, I was not doing ok - about $75 per team, and shooting a team represents about 4+ hours of total work. I took the 4th year off because it wasn't worth it. I was asked to do it again this spring, so I came up with the pre-pay model - parents must pay in advance to have their kid's photo taken, then I give them a print credit, then they order online. It's still not a living, but it's worth it and it's fun. And my kids tell me it's cool and it makes them popular, so that is worth something!!

The pre-pay model really reveals how poorly the on-spec model works. Out of the 200+ pre-paid orders, a little less than half have actually redeemed their print credits and ordered prints so far, and the season ended a month ago. You know that the people who haven't redeemed yet would never have bought anything on-spec. Good thing I already have their money!

As to the onsite printing, I have just set my son up with a regular weekend gig.
He does it solo and shoots the players as they are about to go on the field. Does a team/ group shot and Individuals. The games last 2-4 hours and the 100 or so players are all started off within an hour.

What sport are we talking about? Does he shoot the game action? Sounds like he doesn't, if he has time to print out 100+ photos (I'm thinking 30-60 seconds to print one photo? Nevermind the pre-print prep time). To me that sounds like a good way to make money, but not much like photography.

If need be, to start off a person could use a canon G series camera

No. Just... no.

jmphotocraft

Glort wrote: »

That's a big tell on it's own isn't it?
I made a joke to you before on the other thread about taking peoples money, shooting nothing and refunding the deposits when people didn't have any pics of their kid.
As tongue in cheek as that was, it would be far from a non viable proposition nor an illegal one if you refunded the money on request.

Hehe. You might be able to get away with that once, and then you could never show your face in town again!

The kicker is, I'd be willing to bet you could make more money out of this than busting a gut getting pics and trying to sell them online.

Without a pre-existing culture of expecting photos for sale, yes.

Well if you're talking about the art and other lofty crap, which I hope your not, you're probably right.
Frankly, I couldn't give a chit though.

Maybe I should have said it doesn't sound like much photographic fun. For me the fun and the thrill is the action shots. Sometimes I literally and pump my fist when I get a shot that makes a kid look like a big-leaguer. This also takes considerably more skill and "the eye". I could hire and train a high schooler to do T&I. Does that make them a "Photographer"? Sorta, but not really. If I were to hire someone to share the action work with me, to take photos that I then place in my gallery with my name on it for sale, that job interview would be much more thorough and would require a portfolio.

mercphoto

Glort wrote: »

Getting back to the online/ onsite thing, I'm looking at going more to the onsite/ instant delivery thing. Prepaid still seems to meet with a lot of resistance here but I want to leverage that with the instant gratification. I also think the future is in digital delivery of images on disk and USB.

I think onsite digital delivery could be better for you than onsite printing. Blank CD's are cheap but take awhile to burn, and otical drives don't have the best durability track record. USB sticks burn fast but the "blanks" aren't necessarily cheap. But consider you are't buying paper and ink anymore...

mercphoto

Real interesting lesson in marketing there as the the significance of packaging.

Dude, I work for Apple. There is a company that puts an incredible amount of effort into their packaging. You simply would not believe. But you are right, it IS important. Packaging is an impression, and for some products it is the first impression.

Ferguson

jmphotocraft wrote: »

...charge the organizer a discounted fee - put a line item on the bill for your normal fee and another line item for the discount. You can then take that discount as a tax write-off. I've done 2.

I am not an accountant, but...

You may want to double check with a CPA, as I believe this is not true. I think you can deduct certain expenses like mileage (at a reduced rate), and any materials (if you donated print media for example), but I think you are limited to the lesser of fair market value or materials, which pretty much means never fair market value.

photodad1

What if I charge $10.00 for a print and donate 10% of that to the charity, can I claim that 10% as a tax write-off?

Ferguson

photodad1 wrote: »

What if I charge $10.00 for a print and donate 10% of that to the charity, can I claim that 10% as a tax write-off?

I am not an accountant, but my understanding is "yes", but bear in mind you can just donate $1 to charity and deduct it regardless. There is no necessary connection between the "charge $10" and the "donate 10%".

Similarly a corporation (e.g. C) can donate the services of an employee to a volunteer organization, and they will be deducting the salary -- but they are "deducting" the salary anyway, as salaries are a reduction in taxable income (I mention this as a lot of people use this idea for justifying their time if they are an self-owned company; it's not valid as you can't deduct the same salary twice).

I am not an accountant.

Edit postscript: Also, from a tax standpoint, charging $9 and charging $10 and donating $1 is pretty much the same impact to you personally (that's not always true, depends on whether you are profitable and a few other considerations, but in a "normal" case). Clearly if the $10 comes from a different party than gets the $1 it makes a difference to them.

photodad1

Thanks for the information. I am trying to make the most of this opportunity as a family member volunteered my action photo capabilities before I had a chance to talk the people in charge of the event.

DonFischer

Think I would give more to the charity. 8x10 print you'll have about $1.60 in ink and about .50 in paper. If you gave 1/2 to the charity you'd still make a couple bucks and be getting your name out there at the same time. The amount you give the charity you can write off. I think you can also write off about .50+ cents on your travel round trip. I suspect that if you hand out business cards while your there, you can write off the whole trip. When my step dad was alive he was a CPA, wrote off trips to LasVegas a couple time's a year by visiting a client down there. Talk to your tax prepare about it.