Event Photography ?'s

banbro

Hi everyone, I stumbled on this site last week and have been reading and viewing as many posts as I can... this forum is GREAT!

Like many of you I was a dad with a camera whose main purpose was to photograph my kids at their events. This has slowly evolved into my consideration of getting into the event photography business so the posts I have read about this have been very helpful. I would like to ask a question(s) and get your opinions if I could, I have tried searching the forum but have not turned anything up.

What software do you use/recommend for customer viewing and selection at the event?

Do (or have) you had to transition from shooter to an owner with hired guns who actually take all or some of the photos for/with you? If so, what percentage do you get to spend behind the camera?

For those who have ventured into the fake magazine covers, posters etc..., do you take orders for these and ship them at a later date (so that you can be creative with the individual photos) or do you just use a "blanket" template WYSIWYG that can be printed right then?

Thanks for any comments or links you may have that cover these already.

Thanks....

banbro

How about 5 Minute Photo? Anyone used it before... comments?

Micro Art?

Event photo systems?

Even if you have a website you would recommend I would appreciate your sharing. It seems like there is limited competition in this area but the next away meet we go to where there is an event photog I may try to talk with them and see if they may be willing to share some info.

Thanks...

Brock

bham

When you say Event photography, that is a pretty broad term. Can you define what type of events. Do you do social events, sporting events, etc. Many things can be termed "event".

Customer viewing and selection at an event, that sounds like something that is pretty hard to do, and could be costly to setup, which may increase the customers cost.

I do social events and everything is viewed after the fact online using a website and printed through smugmug.

Can you give us more examples and precise questions, I think this is the reason for your lack of responses IMHO.

banbro

Well.... primarily sports events. I have yet to bump into a pro or serious hobbiest at any of the fields I go to. The setup I am thinking about would be something where parents could view shots that had been taken during the game and could place an order with immediate prints or receive specialized prints later.

The primary sports I am looking at are baseball, swimming, and gymnastics. I would love to do football, soccer, and field hockey as well but I have not practiced with these sports yet.

The other event photos I have done consist of ballet performances and the odd wedding, for both of these I could, and will, rely on web viewing. For weddings I would like to take advantage of onsite printing but I think I have everything figured out for that.

For the sports events I think I would like to incorporate touch screen panels so that I could eliminate the need for customers using a mouse. They could just "touch" the images they wanted, choose the size, swipe their credit card and the images would begin printing. Now this is a very ideal scenerio and I don't know that the software exists for this right now which is why I was curious what others used for onsight sales.

Does that help make more sense???

Thanks...

beetle8

Wow
Sounds like you are planning on investing alot of cake.
I have heard both sides of the argument, order or onsite, I personally promise to have the shot on the site for viewing with in 24hrs, now i do loose some orders with this aproach, no doubt, I also loose the overhead of having to hire all the additional people it would take to have an on site printing set up. I answer the onsite printing question with the "lab prints are better answer" that might get me in trouble with a few, but 98 percent of the time it's true.
Brock, where are you located?
I started out the same, Gymnastics father, this is kind of another one of the hurdles. with the advent of digital photography there are a lot of us trying to have a go of it. this would be a good reason to take it easy on the initial invest.
I've been doing it for about a year as a side venture to my other company. I also aproched a guy who was capturing the gymnast at another event, the info he gave me was very beneficial. I asked his the same question about the viewing software for onsite sales. unfortunately I can't remember what he had said and since I don't offer onsite viewing...
I also worked with another event photographer for one meet who only did online viewing and learned alot from him as well.
well I'll keep my eye on the post and offer you any help that I can, If you're in my area and would like to try it out I've got a few meets coming up.
Keith

banbro

Keith,

Thanks for the input. Yes, it will definately cost some money but I am hoping I will be able to offset a lot of that cost with the equipment I already have (computers, flat panels, etc...).

I am located in Virginia (Hampton Roads) and am looking at a potential startup in the spring when baseball gets up and running. By starting with the baseball I know that I can get by with a smaller setup initially and grow from there over time.

I actually shot a Peter & The Wolf ballet performance this morning and am hoping to get the dance company's nod for their Nutcracker performance in December. It has definately been good practice shooting in a dark theater w/o flash and trying to capture lots of motion.

Our first gymnastics meet is later this month so I will seek out the pros at that event and see if they are willing to share any info with me. (The meet is a considerable distance away so they wouldn't need to worry about me being any competition.)

beetle8

good luck
Well it sounds like you have things under control.
when I started out I checked out as many of the gallery hosting sites as I could find that cater towards this kind of pro. SmugMug is far and away the best in my oppinion that you'll find. cost,benefit, and customer service pound for pound they blow everyone else away. "Did you hear that guys?"
I have a pro account with them and it's been a very pleasent experience.
I'm up in New Hampshire.
I thought about little league and soccer and did shoot a little of both this year but unlike gymnastics meets that put 300 gymnasts in front of me in two days. The 300 kids are spread out at 4 fields over 8 weeks.

bham

banbro wrote:

Well.... primarily sports events. I have yet to bump into a pro or serious hobbiest at any of the fields I go to. The setup I am thinking about would be something where parents could view shots that had been taken during the game and could place an order with immediate prints or receive specialized prints later.

The primary sports I am looking at are baseball, swimming, and gymnastics. I would love to do football, soccer, and field hockey as well but I have not practiced with these sports yet.

The other event photos I have done consist of ballet performances and the odd wedding, for both of these I could, and will, rely on web viewing. For weddings I would like to take advantage of onsite printing but I think I have everything figured out for that.

For the sports events I think I would like to incorporate touch screen panels so that I could eliminate the need for customers using a mouse. They could just "touch" the images they wanted, choose the size, swipe their credit card and the images would begin printing. Now this is a very ideal scenerio and I don't know that the software exists for this right now which is why I was curious what others used for onsight sales.

Does that help make more sense???

Thanks...

First more power to you if you can get this setup going, let us know if you do and how you did it. But I am thinking that it maybe hard to accomplish for a couple of reasons that you may have already thought of. If you will be shooting then who will be attending to the computer equipment, etc. Having thousands of $$ of equipment unattended would scare me. If you shoot a game then there will be a delay until you get the images on the viewing equipment. By then the event is over and people are leaving, will they stay to, one at a time, view the images they want to view. One screen, one viewer at a time.

And I imagine that you can expect to spend at least $2k to set it up (assuming new equipment). Just a guess. I might advise to start with a laptop and taking orders and get a credit card or check or cash. Then see how it goes and see if the onsite sales vs. a website is worth the investment. But I am sure some equipment & software sales people will tell you different.

beetle8

true true
All good points above,
I cant figure out how to add someone elses post in a box in my post
most kids events when its over the tires are screeching.
give em a flyer before and during with the site they can see the pix at from the comfort of they're own home.

bham

Banbro this is what I would worry about:

http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=651243&postcount=8

I got talked into shooting and event where they insisted I bring a dye sub printer on site to sell prints on site. I bought the printer, all the supplies and even after having a booth on site for twelve hours I didn't sell a print.

Then the organizer asked if I could sell prints online. Something else I hadn't done but here I am now. I put up over a thousand pictures from the event and she blasted her email list of hundreds of participants and not one sale.

I also shot and posted a second event here and am waiting to blast that info out and perhaps the second group of people might generate some sames but as of now I am pretty discouraged. Both of these were charity events I shot gratis in hopes to recoup some cost selling prints and in fact would make some extra to donate back to the charity. For one even there were three of us there all day, and two of us all day for the second event. Lots of costs, time, and hassle for no sales..

Although I have spent a lot of time trying to learn the SmugMug system and uploading all the pix (which took forever) I don't know if I can justify paying for a pro account if no one is going to buy any pix.

beetle8

good and bad
As with everything you need to take the good with the bad. I've shot several small events with little to no sales, but, you guessed it I have shot plenty of events with better than expected sales. that's business

banbro

Yes, I have thought about that as well but, just like a lot of things in life, there are no guarantees and that is part of the business risk. The other side of this coin that I have not mentioned yet is that I think there is a real opportunity to get the T & I spot for the league as well. I have talked with the league board about it and right now they use LifeTouch simply because there is no one else in the area that can handle shooting 500 individuals and 40 teams in a single day. I can't do that right now either but I don't think I would have a problem getting 2 - 3 other shooters and then another 2 - 3 to handle orders and organization.

Don't get me wrong, I know it will not be easy... heck, I may not even follow through with it depending how things work out. I do want to give it some deep consideration though and try to work through as many scenerios and business setups as I can.

I know what you are saying about the onsight printing aspect as well. My consideration for that was to rope in the impulse buys and hopefully pad the sales onsight for the number lost online. I thought I had read in a post on this forum that unless you did onsight printing you would not break into the high $ sales... maybe strictly online post game sales is the only way to go??

Thanks for the info and discussion you have provided, it really has made me think about other avenues and options.

bkatz

on-line post game seems better

banbro wrote:

Yes, I have thought about that as well but, just like a lot of things in life, there are no guarantees and that is part of the business risk. The other side of this coin that I have not mentioned yet is that I think there is a real opportunity to get the T & I spot for the league as well. I have talked with the league board about it and right now they use LifeTouch simply because there is no one else in the area that can handle shooting 500 individuals and 40 teams in a single day. I can't do that right now either but I don't think I would have a problem getting 2 - 3 other shooters and then another 2 - 3 to handle orders and organization.

Don't get me wrong, I know it will not be easy... heck, I may not even follow through with it depending how things work out. I do want to give it some deep consideration though and try to work through as many scenerios and business setups as I can.

I know what you are saying about the onsight printing aspect as well. My consideration for that was to rope in the impulse buys and hopefully pad the sales onsight for the number lost online. I thought I had read in a post on this forum that unless you did onsight printing you would not break into the high $ sales... maybe strictly online post game sales is the only way to go??

Thanks for the info and discussion you have provided, it really has made me think about other avenues and options.

I would worry less about the printing and if you can get someone to load them up in original size while you shoot then they can place orders while they are there and then you can crop later (make sure to set the proof delay). I know I lose sales because I take 2 to 3 days to get them online but I do all my post processing before I post and just proof the crops. Always easier to get an order when they know they can see the results right then.

Gary Peterson Photography

Event Photography Thoughts
Well, this is only my second post here, but I thought it would be appropriate for me. My response to the original poster would be, if you have access to a sporting event, and want to make money shooting it, then go for it! I shoot over 200 sporting events a year and there are always more that I can not do, due to scheduling conflicts.

There are a couple of commercially available programs that allow you to do everything you are looking for, but they come at a cost.


I use a couple of different approaches to the events. The one I like the best, that makes myself and the people that work with me the most money is tournament photography. If you are interested in the system I use, drop me a line, and I will tell you what works well for me. It does not involve anything complicated, nor any additional outlay of money, as long as you have a good digital camera set up and computer.