[Closed] Event photographers. Has anyone ever tried pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap ?

Dunno.

I would have thought there was a market for a cheap low res copy.

I'd buy one for a couple of quid.

You'd need top start racing TJ 😛

OP sounds reasonable, I did buy one good pic of myself, £12 or so but I got to OK the levels and colours, worth it. I can see the problems though.

I won't buy an image sent over the net as I don't have a printer. I would rather buy a print and sometimes do from important events like the 3 peaks but agree that they are pricey

I wouldn't know what to do with a jpeg or how to upload it either!

Pretty sure some do it - but most people just steal the watermarked low res previews.

Yep, i'd pay a quid each for a couple of photos of sufficient resolution to use on Facebook (i.e. not very high), but i'd never dream of paying £5+ for one image.

i always let mine go for free but have my paypal account details on the site incase anyone feels the pic is good enough for then to give me whatever they think they are worth, i'm definately not a pro photog though

If it was me (which admittedly it's not) I'd offer high res for a tenner (but retain copyrite) or Facebook sized for "whatever it's worth to you" on the basis most will probably pay a pound, and a few will probably pay a lot more. Even 50p is worth 100% more than no 50p!!!

As a professional photographer, earning a reasonable income from events, (although not sporting events) I don't think that it would work as a business model.
Happy to hire myself, all the photography equipment, 10 computers, printers (fast ones and big ones, if you need them!),7.5 tonne lorry, marquee all the wireless and cat5 networking equipment to connect it all up for a very fair amount. Payment up front, obviously 🙂

WEJ - the point is these photographers at the events seem to sell a few pics at £10 - would they sell ten times as many at £1? Or five times as many at £2?

Many of us would pay a £ or 2 but not a tenner for a pic. By doing this low res / high res you still have your market for the folk who want a 8x10 glssy print for a tenner

I have always thought about buying a JPEG or two taken at various DH courses, but for a decent quality JPEG they all want £4.50 minimum. Even for a low res JPEG (suitable for phones/facebook) £2.50 is normally the going rate.

So I buy none at all.

The stupid thing is, if they sold hi-res JPEGS for £1 -£1.50 each I'd prolly buy several each time. So I just can't understand how a business model works for electronic files where the chances of selling any are so low (like the OP, I know no-one who has actually bought one), but you could massively increase that by dropping the price and not require any more output than a bit of time to send the email through.

Seems like absolute madness to me.

the best model for this i've come across is these guys [url= http://www.sportograf.de/de/shop/start ]sportograf[/url] at the 24h de Finale who sold complete, digital, sets of all your photos for €20 - got about 18 in all for that much and they were far better than most of the event photography you normally see.

Iv recently started selling some photos online. I offer the option for prints which range £8 - £15 which are professionally printed to a high quality. As you said though not everyone is into the print idea so I also sell a full res JPEG for £8 and now thanks to your suggestion a low res (600x400px) unwatermarked JPG for £2.

Selling a digital copy is always risky as people can easily print as many of them as they wish, copyright does stop them re-publishing or selling any of these but its hard to enforce sometimes.

On the otherhand, i ride races occasionally too and I have purchased a couple of images of me on A4 prints as a souvenir so they do sell. The other market for selling prints are girl/boyfriend/family etc who want to buy one as a gift and have it framed, its not a large market but it does happen.

Thanks for the ideas anyhow I will be adding a low and high res option to my images that are for sale!

Selling a digital copy is always risky as people can easily print as many of them as they wish,

why would anyone want lots of printed pics of themselves racing?
(unless they were a weird narcissist and wanted to give them out to friends and family to hang on their wall)

Thanks for the reply WEJ. I know there's a few professional photographers on this forum and you're the only one to reply so far.
I think you've missed the point though.
I can't see the need for a 7.5t lorry and 10 computers, but if that's what you need to take photos, I'm sure you know your business better than I do.
My original point, and the one that most people seem to agree with, is that you would sell more pictures at a substantially lower price.
More happy customers and more profit for you.

If it's what those of us on the bikes want, why is it not what those of you with the cameras are selling ?

tonyfong, I see your point also, but 2400dpi scanners are pretty common these days. I don't see how limiting sales to printed photos restricts people from copying your photos once they've bought them.

I was just thinking that, despite edric's comments, digital images are far more useful and common these days than printed ones. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw a printed photo of anyone I know on a bike. Everything gets circulated on the web these days.

Hey MrSmith, thats my point I just didnt explain very well. Say you bought an image from me, then you are entitled to print as many as you want for personal use however no one ever does but what you might do is print some and gift them to your family or friends or maybe stick a few up at your local bike shop etc, its this kind of thing that photographers would want you to pay more for.

I think we're prying open a small can of worms here with Photographers Vs Bikers, well luckily many of us are Photographers that Bike and I certainly understand what Graham is getting at

Graham, point taken and very valid one at that. People do buy prints though, im assuming the more 'Non-Computer' orientated people prefer this format. However I agree events photographers should offer the whole range so Prints or Digital both in High Res and Low Res for a cheaper option.

I agree on the general thought, some money is better than none but the photographer runs a risk of only selling 600 x 400px images at £1 each and not covering the cost of being at the event in the first place.

Thing with that idea is that every man and his dog at races now has a digi camera, iPhone or whatever and millions of pics/videos are online within a few hours of the event, most fully nickable off Flickr/Fotopic/Facebook so it's even more difficult for the photographer to make their work stand out, they do that by having large, excellent quality images.

Seen a few at du races charging about 2 quid a pic I'll pay up to a fiver for a.good.image tend to.use them online mainly so not interested in prints. Did the e2e and the mega saw some nice pics.but.not worth what they were charging

I don't think that I could deal with people quickly enough to make it worth while when on site. A competitor would usually take a few minutes to find and view their photos. The ones that then go on to purchase would take another couple of minutes for the transaction to take place. That sale would have to cover the cost of sales staff, photographer and someone to process and file the photographs. If you were to (optimistically) expect 20% of the contestants to purchase one £1 image then takings at an event with 500 competitors would be £100 to cover wages, travelling maintenance of equipment etc.

If you were to rely on internet sales, the success rate would be much less as people lose interest, or just forget to look. Only 5-10% of competitors would possibly purchase, even at £1 per image. Any savings on employing staff at the event would be negated by the reduction in sales.

In my experience, peoples interest varies from "wouldn't even bothering to send an email for a free photo" which probably covers 50% of the population. To "can I have a copy of any photo with me in it, even if you can't really make me out. Whatever the cost" which, sadly, are few and far between.

professional sports photographer would have the knowledge. They would capture so much more "atmosphere" than a still photograph could ever do.

they would also realise how much footage would need to be shot and then the hours spent sat in front of a computer to edit it down. all for peanuts.

Don't the riders go round one at a time at horse events though ?
I don't think you'd be able to provide personal videos of a bike event in the same way.

One variation I'd like to see would be a speed trap camera.
I was hitting 30mph down the zig zag at Bristol yesterday and I've done over 40mph down that chalk track that SPAM Biking use on their events.
I'd love to have photographic evidence of that. 😀

How do event photographers handle the selling. Is it all face to face onsite? I would have thought an online service through say photobox would save alot of costs to the photographer which could make things cheaper for the biker. Again I'm not saying I know best just curious

I must have had about 100 photos taken of me while racing by professional photographers.
I haven't bought a single one.
I don't know anyone else who has either.

And yet they must or how are these guys staying in business year after year.

I've bought a couple of digital downloads for £8. First was when I did my first century ride and the second was from this years Dragon Ride as it was a good shot of me rounding a bend on a downhill. I've spent more than £8 on a digital download of me on Mt Ventoux but only because they were good shots of a great experience and I'm unlikely to be there ever again.

I'll probably not buy any next year at that price however.

Your idea of web quality resolution for £1 is a good one and I'd probably buy a few at that price.

Right place right time sells by email but he does charge more than OP is looking to pay. Personally i agree that being cheaper would sell more and probably more cash overall - works for cheap music, flights, hotels doesn't it. I've actually bought quite a few images and prints and a mouse mat with me on it.

Gets his coat......

The way to sell em cheap is take the photos, upload to a website and tag them by race number (if thats appropriate) and give the options of jpeg - hi/lo quality, small print, large print, canvas, etc for reasonable costs.

Then on the day give out a business card for everyone to log-on later and order

*simples*

Even 50p is worth 100% more than no 50p!!!

Maths fail! 🙂

With all the need/want for avatars and profile pics, and the frequency at which many people change them, I reckon the lo-res version for £1 is a great idea. Thinking of iPhone apps, buying an app for 59p doesn't hardly register, but I reckon the good apps make plenty of profit.

I normally go and check for event photos, but I've never bought any. Would I buy a facebook sized pic for £1 - if it was über-easy (thinking iTunes store, or Amazon One-Click) then yes, I reckon I would.

but the photographer runs a risk of only selling 600 x 400px images at £1 each and not covering the cost of being at the event in the first place

But better than selling no full-res images at £8...?

the £1 low res versions could be online only allowing vendors to concentrate on the higher value sales face to face. for the 24hr events you could have someone uploading to a website and tagging race numbers close to real time then riders could search for photos on their smartphones - i'd be surprised if you didn't sell a few extra printed copies off the back of that too.

If it was me (which admittedly it's not) I'd offer high res for a tenner (but retain copyrite)

You retain the copyright even if you gave them photo.

Right place right time sells by email but he does charge more than OP is looking to pay. Personally i agree that being cheaper would sell more and probably more cash overall - works for cheap music, flights, hotels doesn't it. I've actually bought quite a few images and prints and a mouse mat with me on it.

I usually don't get involved in discussions on event photography, but as I've been mentioned...

Generally I sell 2 sizes of jpeg:

The first is around 2000 pix on the longest side and costs £4.45 - good for a 7"x5" print or any computer use.

The second is as out of camera and costs £7.45 - around 3500 to 4000 pix on longest side - good for any enlargement you're liable to want to make.

I sometimes charge a bit more for pics from team events, working on the principle that the images will be passed around.

Because of the sales system I use (which I think is the simplest for the customer to use) I only have the option of those 2 image sizes, though I choose the prices.

The system used to offer an even smaller image, which I used to sell for less money. When the small option was taken away (by the people who's system I use (and pay into dependent on the number of pictures I upload)) my overall takings didn't go down. In other words, I have tried the proposed system laid out above, and it doesn't work to the photographer's advantage.

Actually I don't e-mail the images anymore, they are downloadable and kept (after purchase) available to download again by the purchaser in perpetuity.

I realise it seems like a pretty simple business, but like most things, there's more to it than meets the eye.

Right, I'll get back to the really important issues I normally like to comment on, like Ton's food bill.