Sports Photographers

PictureThis!

This is my third year of sports photography and I am thinking about changing how I book events. In the past, people just book a game and I show up, take pictures, edit, and post. The reason that I'm thinking about changing this policy is some games I don't get enough (if any) return from sales. How do you charge for this service?

I was thinking along the lines of charging $100-150 for a two-hour game and the customer would get that back in credit. But, I don't know how this would work, because one mom's not going to pay that, maybe a group. I'm not sure if that would fly. I also thought about a flat fee (say $50) to shoot the event and then lower print prices (or maybe include 1-2 files on a CD). I also thought about charging a lump sum (say $250) and including a CD + posting them on SmugMug.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Mulder32

PictureThis! wrote:

This is my third year of sports photography and I am thinking about changing how I book events. In the past, people just book a game and I show up, take pictures, edit, and post. The reason that I'm thinking about changing this policy is some games I don't get enough (if any) return from sales. How do you charge for this service?

I was thinking along the lines of charging $100-150 for a two-hour game and the customer would get that back in credit. But, I don't know how this would work, because one mom's not going to pay that, maybe a group. I'm not sure if that would fly. I also thought about a flat fee (say $50) to shoot the event and then lower print prices (or maybe include 1-2 files on a CD). I also thought about charging a lump sum (say $250) and including a CD + posting them on SmugMug.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

I ran into the same problem when shooting sports. I'd do all the work, and then no sales. My current approach (just starting this way so I can't tell you if it's good or not), is to contract with a parent to photograph their individual son or daughter. I suppose 2 sets of parents could go in together, etc, etc. That's a flat hourly rate, then I give them a CD of everything after I've edited it. At their request, I can post a gallery on my website. I'd rather do it this way, then go to a game, edit, post, and...hope people picked up my flyer at the game. I even went so far as to fax the school's athletic director to give to the athletes, but it worked poorly. Maybe I'm giving up on that way too easily, but for now, I'm going to try this new "contracted" approach.

mercphoto

You are shooting speculatively, and when doing so you always risk shooting something that doesn't pan out. Your question about charging $100 or so up-front to shoot a game sounds like you are wanting to switch to an assignment model and away from speculative. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not sure you understood that was the direction you were going. If you want to shoot on assignment then be very clear with what you are going to be delivering to the person forking over the money. Will you be taking money from one parent/party and then still shoot in your normal speculative manner? If so, I think that would be a mistake. If you take money from a certain party and then tailor your shooting based on who gave you the money and what they are expecting in return then it will probably work.

The alternative is to continue along the speculative route but be very aware of which leagues/teams/age-groups/sections-of-town/etc. are likely to buy photos and which aren't. A spec youth sports shooter I know around here will not touch middle school football for example (they won't buy, but younger age groups will) and won't shoot high school varsity football (but freshman football sells well). There are sections of town he knows won't buy photos and he avoids those. He also knows that certain positions sell well and others don't, so he doesn't waste time snapping pictures that he knows doesn't sell.

So the next question you should ask is, is there a particular reason why some of your events sell photos and others do not? Answering that question might not be easy, but it might lead you to a better way of doing spec photography.

PictureThis!

Bill, thanks! That is some great advice. I have decided to sit down and look at exactly how much I made from each game last year. I think that will help me out.

Jeffro

After 3 years of shooting motocross racing I've decided to hang it up. I worked for a motorcycle magazine (Cycle USA) duing this time period, which gave me a guarenteed income. Sales from photos was just more icing on the cake. Last year the editor of the magazine decided to limit the number of stories from each track to one per issue. I've always had at least 2 per issue in the past.

With the guarenteed profit margin being cut in half I decided to give it up. The time spent at the track, on the computer, and wear and tear on the equipment won't be worth it this season.

I told the track promoter and editor I was done. They didn't make me an offer to stay....maybe I was terrible , so it looks like my weekends are free.

A buddy and I were talking about event photography last night and we decided we won't do it unless there is some sort of guarenteed payment. Not worth the risk to us.

I guess if you have a kid / friend taking part in the event and are going to be there anyway, and taking photos too, it's not all bad to do it.

JimM

Internet Marketing Can Help
Feel free to view my rates here: http://www.jimmitte.com/rates.htm

I only shoot games where I have marketing rights with the team without money up front and frankly I don't make much money shooting sports. The good news is I enjoy doing it.

Search Engine Optimization can really help people find images that didn't know were available to publish. I made this site Brighton Football Photos and linked it to my Smugmug site so people looking for Brighton Michigan Football can and will find my site. That is where my surprise orders come from.

Good luck!

snaptie2002

I thought about trying that and I know two photographers that did try that. (referring to picturethis)

During my decision making process I asked myself this.

If a parent/customer will not go to the trouble of ordering a few 4x6's off my website after I have made my company very visible, placed a business card in their hand, promoted my Behind off, and posted over 20k pictures,what makes me think they will go to the trouble of seeking me out and offering me a $100.00 to $200.00 gig to shoot one game?

I came up with nothing. So instead of putting myself in a position of sitting around waiting for the phone to ring we have been shooting and posting galleries like nobody's business. We interact with parents, players, coaches and school officials several times per week. We don't sell a big percentage of our shots but we have sold several thousand and we have only been doing this for about nine months.

I say all that to say this. Even though it is discouraging sometimes to sell a small pecentage of posted pictures I think it is very important to put yourself out there as much as you can. It will lead to better things.

A few weeks after we started shooting action, some team and individual work started trickling in. It did not take long to do the math on that one!

Average a couple hundred bucks for thirty minutes. So we started promoting T&I and picked up more and more as each season came and went.

I got a call from our rec park director yesterday asking if we could do T&I for the whole baseball league. Over 300 players!

So in a round about way the action has paid off well beyond the 1k or so per month in direct sales. I would recommend keeping up the spec. shooting if you have the time for it (and some other source of income:D .)

The other two photographers? One got out of sports all together and the other one has only posted one new gallery in about six months.


Thanks,
Marty