[Closed] Race Phototraphers? Yeah. OK....

Tim, you take a mean photo 8)

Add into the equation that most of the events in the UK are muddy field rides it doesn't give much scope for creativity...

The start/finish and arena is a muddy field, certainly. Which is why you need to get off your ass and find a location you can do something with.

Oddly, all the pics I've seen from BBF are within a reasonably easy walk of the carpark...... 😕

If I've learned nothing from doing a few MBUK shoots it's that something that looks interesting to ride doesn't necessarily make a good photo, and vice versa.

Looking down your photos Tim, the only two that are actually of riders look very much like every other photographer's photos of people racing. There's just not much you can do to make it look interesting!

Oh funny OP 🙂

I've got a few race photos and I spent the day being a photo gimp for a mag shoot. So e of these shots are hanging in my downstairs loo. They show a middle aged fella on a medium/high end bike either looking moderatly sweaty or otherwise vaguely interested in remaining upright on a bike. IMO the only really decent photos of mountain bikers are so staged or planned that the chances of recreating that on a race course or more or less NIL. You may as well just capture the riders as they come past you...

Oh that telecom guy in the water splash? MM in either 06 or 07 it was as they say a "target rich environment"..

They show a middle aged fella on a medium/high end bike either looking moderatly sweaty or otherwise vaguely interested in remaining upright on a bike.

What!! you mean you didn't even pull the 'mtb rider face' 😉

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The ones I like are oft' not the ones that sell!

I used the Clic24 to illustrate a point, in the woods you can get a little more creative and produce some more dramatic images - hopefully, but the Mendips course is very spread out and rather open in nature.

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This was taken at the BORS, which has attracted a reasonably high number of sales, illustrating the earlier point that it's the newer rider who purchases the images.

In this series of images taken on this corner, I've attempted to creatate a sense of depth and perspective, partly by positioning myself on a hill top on a bend but with the use of out of focus riders and a 200mm lens. YOu wait for 10 minutes and 5 riders all appear at the same time! You guys, [i]spread out[/i] so I can better take each of you in turn (it's not a circuit but 4 Merida style distances up to 121km).

The ones I like are oft' not the ones that sell!

Correct! I think that's what's being said. You can take nice photos of the race, or you can take photos that will sell, they're [i]rarely [/i]the same thing.

[i]The ones I like are oft' not the ones that sell![/i]

Is that Rowberrow at night? Smashing pic.

If only I could learn to take good pictures that sell! 😉

Night time image above was at Clic24 - see this month's MBUK for the full 5 page spread.

YOu wait for 10 minutes and 5 riders all appear at the same time! You guys, spread out so I can better take each of you in turn

The guys who photograph the road sportive events have a slightly irritating habit of snapping two people riding together separately. Eventually, one chap got this one, which (while totally unspectacular) has me and my mates, having a ride together. I bought that one... 🙂

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Genuine LOL at the t mobile guy 🙂

I would also add that the road photographers IMHO have a harder job.
At least I can lay out all manner of lights to make both the rider and the surrounding trail look interesting, add some mud and you have, to my mind, a slightly easier job of photographing riders.

Oh, and meant to add, there were eventually so many photographers round that water splash the flash going off was like being in the middle of a fireworks display. I was still blinking out the stars in my eyes miles later. I'm sure it was off putting, and difficult for some riders.

But hey, there were probably some good action shots, so that's OK

Off topic slightly, at Swinley the other day there was a guy taking pics at the jumps. Now I'm not very good, but some of the kids are above average (or at least could pull simple tricks on demand).

Now avoiding any legal issues of the fact he was taking photos of kids (a bit silly IMO as long as the Daily Mail and the Sun are still in business).

Whats to stop him taking a pic of me on my 456 getting some rad/sick/tothemax/awesum air. Selling it to On-One to use in an Ad campaign, for millions of £ and retireing?

Ditto race photographers? Who owns the rights to the image, surely the riders must get some say in how their image is used.

EDIT: I appreciate the inaccuracy of my post in stateing that on-one would actualy advertise anything rather than rellying on niche mongers to keep them in business.

Nah - no rights if the photo is taken on public land.

EDIT: Oh wait - actually, if it's for commercial useage, he'd have to get a model release.

Nah - no rights if the photo is taken on public land.

as long as it's not for commercial use... so if said photographer wanted to sell it to on-one for lot's of money for their advertising etc, they'd need to have your permission to do so, AFAIK...

Whats to stop him taking a pic of me on my 456 getting some rad/sick/tothemax/awesum air. Selling it to On-One to use in an Ad campaign, for millions of £ and retireing?

Ditto race photographers? Who owns the rights to the image, surely the riders must get some say in how their image is used.

As I understand it, the subject of the pic has absolutely no rights over it at all, if taken in a public place. You can't stop someone taking a pic, and you have no control over what they do with it. Once you take a pic, it's yours.

Personally, I agree these guys:
http://photographernotaterrorist.org/

EDIT
I'm a bit wrong it seems! I didn't know about the commercial use thing because I only looked into it from the POV of taking pics and selling them to the people I'd photographed. Sorry. 🙂

thats what I thought, but surely there comes a point where its a photograph of someone rather than a photograph of public land that you just happened to be in?

I've seen plenty of BBC/ITV signs back home saying words to the effect of "filming in progress from **am to **pm on **/**/**** to **/**/****. By entering this area you giving your cosncent to have your image used by ITV/BBC and carefully selected* thrid parties"

*anyone who'll pay for the footage

Pap photographers can just rock up to someone's front door, ring the bell, and when they answer, unload a flashgun into their just-out-of-bed face and go publish it. As long as the front door in question is on public land (i.e., a normal road).

It was pouring with rain, and he was halfway down a slippy muddy gully, and he gets a pic of that quality. Well done sir, that's what I'm talking about.

Thanks! 😀

Personally, I try and sustain the professional photographers by buying their images, but that's my own personal take

ah yes, an endangered species like post offices 🙁

What you'll find, increasingly, is that the main events, let's use Mayhem as an exaple, attracts many photographers.

YOu'll have one sanctioned by the event organisers (will they even be a professional photographer this year?)and one probably working for Original Source, but the rest, of whom there will be many, will have no profit in mind; it's just for the pleasure of it that they're there.

One week after Mayhem, Flickr will be awash with images, some good, some awful; most everything will be free. That's why the professionals have all but deserted the main events unless they're being paid to be there or they're going to earn something 1/2 worthwhile from their work, which at Mayhem, they won't.

As I say, taking mtn biking images to sell to the general public is not quite the retirement plan your book keeper had in mind! And we haven't even touched on prices and goods that you can offer to riders.

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Shot for a 5 page magazine article about the Kielder 100 in September.

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That's why the professionals have all but deserted the main events unless they're being paid to be there or they're going to earn something 1/2 worthwhile

and should we care ?

As I understand it, the subject of the pic has absolutely no rights over it at all, if taken in a public place. You can't stop someone taking a pic, and you have no control over what they do with it. Once you take a pic, it's yours.

More or less right: that is only completely true for editorial photography. Once you get into photography which is to be used for advertising, you really should get a model release when the subject of the photo is clearly identifiable. If someone takes your pic and uses it to sell, say, Marmite, when you have a known hatred of marmite, so your mates all start taking the mick and asking why you're advertising a product you hate, well that's where a model release gets the 'tog out of the deep stuff, or allows you to seek recompense yadda yadda yadda

user-removed - Member

EDIT: Oh wait - actually, if it's for commercial useage, he'd have to get a model release.

Is this correct? Pretty sure the usage is irrelevant (or it used to be). Otherwise, how would photo-journalists/paparazzi photogs go about their business.

Oh, NBT answered that...

Oliver Coats is the best bike photographer out there bar none.

Again, it's work that will barely cover the mortgage. If it was, the specialist photographers would be VAT registered; you’re barely making a living selling various sized jpegs for well under £20 at mtn biking events.

As regards copyright, no advertiser / client will touch any copy without the relevant model releases, unless they think they can get away with it, and here I’m thinking about the Press Complaints procedure or a civil prosecution, which is slightly off-topic.

Here's one I bought. Worth it I thought. [img] [/img]

Joolze does some great work and manages to get a decent mix of "every rider in the race" and arty/action-y/different shots.
I've bought a few shots of hers from over the years, my favourite is this one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joolzed/2449706664/in/set-72157604780098289/
(can't copy/paste direct and yes, I did purchase it from her!).

There's a mix though of people who just do it for fun (a bit like me) and occasionally manage to get something vaguely decent to people doing it professionally but badly to folk who get it right every time.

TBH, the only real way to make something approaching a few bob at an event is to be officially accredited, otherwise you have to rely upon posts on a few web forums which is not good enough.

I think to make a good living doing event photography the setup with the camera in one place and machine gun the shutter is probably the way forward. I've seen it at plenty of triathlons and other events too. No art, no risks taken, just a shot of a racer racing.

That way you get a picture of everybody, and the more photographs you have of more people, then the more likely you are to sell sufficient to pay your wages.

Iirc a road photographer said on Monday he had 15K photos online from one of this weekend's gone events. Which suggest there is one of everybody.

Most riders are not photographers, and are quite happy with any picture of themselves at the race.

'One in particular had more kit than anyone I've ever seen at a race, all mounted on a tripod, and seemingly taking pics automatically as riders passed. He sat there looking bored stiff. If you were there, you'd have seen him. You couldn't really miss him!'

Well, I can only appolagise for that.
The reason the trap is out there is to make sure that everyone got a snap and to be honest I don't think those were really that bad. Guess it depends how commited you were at that point.

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The guy that was with the gear was there for several reasons.
1- To look after the gear
2- To pause the trap when the solos came back through, then later, the pairs so they don't get continuously flashed at.
3- To gee on the riders, he obviously failed on this point.

There were 2 other photographers out there + myself, and I agree most of the pics look very much the same but the problem we have is to get 3 or 4 sharp images of every rider. On top of this, with a team of say 4, you will get just 1 chance of a photo in minimum 2 hours

This means taking 25 shots and getting 1 or 2 good ones is pretty much out of the question.

Last week at the SPAM Set2Rise I spent alot of time on slow panning shots, you get about 75% keeper rate on these and compared to 90% from the usuall head on type. Granted the panning shots look much better, however... I must have sold about 5% panning shots to 50% trap shots - go figure.

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It'd be interesting to learn what the visitor to number of actual sales people are making (see my figures earlier in the post) as some events I've shot, people have bought 18x12 prints at £70 which convinced me not to sell jpegs from the outset and work on a smaller number of sales providing quality prints - just as I do in my social photography business.

This means a certain amount of admin and might from time to time lead to other sales. It also means I do occationally miss out on sales if riders want the full sized images, which is akin to buying the negatives, this runs against the grain as I see it.

This printing of my images is very satisfying from a professional perspective & I always try to have 2x remote flash units out on the trail on any given image and try never use direct flash. I need to select my locations with care based on these criteria - not always easy.

I appreciate others work selling different sized jpegs, and that there's no Right or Wrong in this, just different business plans and ideas.

Nothing technically special about these photos from Bristol, but I reckon they show an imaginative angle that the professionals don't get and they make a good souvenir of the event.

Jumping on the bike at the start.
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And almost 12 hours later.
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Nothing technically special about these photos from Bristol

you're not wrong

Yes, but if the choice is between technically good or imaginative photos, I'll go for those two as a reminder of my day.

just dont understand why people would pay for photos of their arse as they ride along, or a plain old riding along fireroad. MUST have something about it. i like these ones... all captured during DH races (maybe more exciting?)

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angle that the professionals don't get

Now I wonder why that would be?
Maybe you're new around bike events:

The professionals are either:
1) 25m ahead of the pack in a vehicle / better placed that this first shot 💡
2) out on the trail awaiting the first riders through 💡

A tip: photograph riders from the front as you're not ID'ing anyone from these angles (no race numbers) - ergo you won't sell any images.

You won't see the magazines picking up the tab for your day rate ever again with images like this. You need to shoot what either sells to the riders or sells the magazine. A little blunt - but best to let you down now before you dig yourself even further into the mire.

Yay this thread contains lots of my favourite things - photography, mountain biking, PP being pompous (again), and Ti29er being even more pompous (again). 🙂

Ti29er you must be a good salesman to be selling basic looking snaps with a blown out sky like this to a magazine

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Here's my favourite pic of me from the Mega which I bought.

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You won't see the magazines picking up the tab for your day rate ever again with images like this. You need to shoot what either sells to the riders or sells the magazine. A little blunt - but best to let you down now before you dig yourself even further into the mire.

Was he claiming to be a professional? I thought he was just saying he liked those photos and they were different to the norm?

I've said it before Tim, but I really don't think you're God's gift to photography, as you seem to think! Not saying I could do any better, but I find your preaching a little odd and rather tiresome.

Oy Vey! This will run and run! Re selling 'files' as opposed to prints, well I do both (for weddings and events) and do fairly well out of both types of sale.

I just think well why miss out on a £2.50 sale of a web-sized pic at 72dpi?