Sports photographers at events high prices for downloads of pics! your thoughts

Just looked at how much they are charging for the Whistler Bike Park photos.
$25 CAD, so quite a bit. £6 is less than half that.
If I had known he was there and styled up the jump a bit, I might have gone for it.
As it is, the only think you can see is my tongue 🙂

Pretty sure all those photographers have a better grasp of their market than the consumers saying “It should be cheaper!”

They work at volume with a low hit rate for sales. £6 is cheap compared to most I’ve seen, and if you wanted to hire a photographer for anything, at a fair rate it’ll work out a lot more than that per good image.

If its a decent picture of you doing something you enjoy why wouldn’t you pay £6 for it.

I paid £10 for a high res image of me at the GT7 – it was a good picture.

Anyone who thinks that this is ruthless profiteering is welcome to either set up business as an event photographer or not buy the picture in the first place

If it was too expensive, people wouldn’t buy them and the photographers would spend all day in a muddy field for nothing.

Is this a joke, six quid?
I thought it was going to be £50 or something of that magnitude.
I suppose you could spend it on a pint of lager and packet of pork scratchings instead.

This place makes me laugh sometimes.
£6-£10 for a high-res download is fine by me, it is a nice keepsake and doesn’t cost much more than a few energy products or a Maccy-Ds on the way home..

I assume all of you moaning about the cost don’t regularly get caught for school photos at £15-£20 a time for a digital file??

Cost and value. The photographs I have from whislter are priceless in my opinion.

Why don’t you lot stop being so nasty? I think it is a fair question.

I think we’d all pay £50 for a really top photo of us looking well rad. But what about when we do events regularly and the photos are so-so?

I put a huge amount of time and effort into writing a blog (plug: 29gears.blogspot.co.uk) and it’s always nice to have some photos to accompany the words. I do it for fun, for people’s entertainment, to help promote the events and the sport, and fair play most photographers will give me free low-res photos for it, knowing they get a little extra exposure and that if they do occasionally catch me in just the right light I’ll buy one at the going rate. But some don’t – they still want £30 for a couple of tiny shit photos. Which is their right, but it makes no sense to me. Why aren’t they willing to haggle on the shots that aren’t so great?

£6 is a bargain, and I am not a photographer. I own a few race photos, because I did a lot of races. I would pay up to £15 without quibble, maybe more.

A firm called Sportograf did the No Fuss event photos for a while and their business method was pretty good- £20 for every jpeg they took of you during the event. Most would only buy one photo at a tenner but more would buy lots of photos for £20. They had around three photographers though.

I was at Antur Stiniog on Saturday, bought 2 photos of me at £8.95 each, if they’d been cheaper or offered bulk discount I probably would have bought the other photos of me too.

I don’t feel it was too expensive, they’re decent photos which make me look like I can actually ride a bike!

I used to work part time as a camera man at equestrian events around 2001. The guy running the thing charged anything from £70 – £200 for DVDs and people gladly paid it. Not everyone I should add, but a fairly high percentage. He was even able to get pre-sales for up and coming events.

I guess the horsey set have considerably more disposable income than the average mtb’er. Or perhaps, daddy Cornwallis Twistleton just can’t say no his darling Petunia or whatnot.

The old “you love it, so why should I pay you a decent wage” excuse is one that a lot of people who’ve been to art college or do anything creative will have heard a lot,

That wasn’t what I was saying at all, I have no problem with Photographers (Professional or Amateur) putting whatever price they like against their work, I’m not going to quibble over “Value” as I understand there’s a fair bit of time and expense involved in producing each image and I doubt many actually recoup their true costs, they should probably be charging much more…

As a potential customer I’m either going to decide I want a picture and pay for it, or I’m going to politely pass.

My decision to buy an image would be based more on my own performance at the event than my (inexpert) perception of the quality of the image, as my placing’s are (were) generally piss poor I’m not so bothered about owning a picture of me failing to perform on a bicycle.
I’m more at the “there just for a laugh” end of the scale like most people TBH…

Just received the email for the photos from the Hull 10K. Single photo £17.99, pack of 4 with some having my finish time applied £34.99. The pictures are crap, no composition just snaps of runners going past a set position. This is all on top of the entry fee which wasn’t cheap either. I think I’ll pass on the photos even if I did get a new PB.

Paid around £25 for photos at a track day before, but I got around 100 excellent photos for the money.

Did a few others and the photographers weren’t as good so didn’t purchase.

Bike ones our club usually has someone who photos for free and puts them on Facebook afterwards. Away events I’d purchase photos at $10 a shot if they were good.

I paid a tenner for that. I was a bit miffed, but only because the same company charged me £2.95 the previous year. It’s a nice picture and what can £10 get you nowadays?

Problem is, it *is* difficult to produce good images, but that doesn’t stop people producing naff images and charging for them. FWIW I’ve done a few events as an amateur and it’s a lot of hassle. I’ve only ever asked for charitable donations for my photos though

Problem is, it *is* difficult to produce good images, but that doesn’t stop people producing naff images and charging for them. FWIW I’ve done a few events as an amateur and it’s a lot of hassle. I’ve only ever asked for charitable donations for my photos though

Exactly, I could look though 250+ images i’ve been tagged in on R&R when racing, and I could count on one hand the images I would actually pay money for. Most are amateur at best.

I’ve bought 2 images over the years, think this one cost me about £11, but it was for a memory of a fun day out on the Whistler EWS. I’m not a photo buff, but it seemed like a pretty decent picture to me 🙂

I paid a tenner for that. I was a bit miffed, but only because the same company charged me £2.95 the previous year. It’s a nice picture and what can £10 get you nowadays?

four cans of Beavertown neck oil session IPA. it’s what i would spend £10 on rather than a pic of some beardy mincing on a clown bike 🙄

Problem is, it *is* difficult to produce good images, but that doesn’t stop people producing naff images and charging for them.

Agreed. I like Hob Nob’s image above though. Rule of thirds, depth of field, the tape taking you visually through the shot, interest in the background etc.

Whenever I’ve tried to take good pictures of friends it has involved them doing the same section a good few times whilst they get the riding right and I get the shot timing and composition right. I’ve also found remote flashes make a huge difference the quality of the lighting of the shot. Chances of doing that en masse on one take a rider is always going to be slim.

So how much would people pay to spend half an hour with a photographer at a picturesque location (i.e they were located there and you booked a time slot) to get your very own ‘magazine cover shot’?

That picture of Hob-nobs’s is good. The main difference between that and many amateur photos is that the background was probably chosed first and the rider is secondary. Many amateur pics have put no thought into the backgrounds and/or depth of field and this jumps out at me.

You are paying hundreds (thousands?) of pounds for your mountain bike parts and maybe £20 or so to enter the competition and you’re complaining about £6 for a photo?

This is exactly why there are no good photographers on the market these days – because all the experienced photogs have been undercut by casual amateurs who do a half arsed job! And why is this? It’s because tight fisted punters like you on their fancy expensive mountain bikes think that £6 is a lot of money to pay for a photograph which will remind them of their special day for years to come.

To succeed as a photographer is so difficult these days, there is a huge outlay for decent camera equipment, cameras cost thousands and so do quality lenses. And then there’s the cost of hosting the website that you’re downloading from. And the cost of running the car that takes the photographer to the venue…tax, MOT, insurance, petrol, repairs. And the time it takes to get there. Then there’s the time it takes to hang around all day taking the shots (you probably think that’s the easy bit but to get a GOOD shot takes planning, skill and experience). And then at the end of the day you have to upload your couple of hundred shots onto the computer (a fast high spec one helps). And then you have to post process the shots which takes hours and hours! How much do you get paid an hour again?!! And then you have to upload them all onto your website, which also takes ages.

And then if you’re lucky about 20 mountain bikers like you will find it within themselves to part with the massive amount £6 for a brilliant reminder of their day that took all that effort to bring to fruition, instead of putting it towards their next bike part. So after a full day’s work driving to the venue to get there early to scope out the track and find the best vantage points and figure out whether to use flash or not and stay for the race and drive home and process the images on the expensive computer and upload them to the website….

…they make £120.

And after you take off all the overheads above, they might break even by doing 40 or 50 similar jobs. And then they can start thinking about paying the mortgage.

I shoot for fun and have been freelancing with a small local sports photography business for 7+ years.

Bomberman has summed the situation up perfectly with regards what’s required and associated costs.

I’m lucky that I can dip in and out of this as I like but my friend’s are only just about breaking even. I think they’re effectively getting minimum wage once they’ve factored in all costs.

Using a local 10K run of 500ish people as an example, we’ll typically rattle off 10 – 15000 shots. Every one of those needs to be hand checked before uploading and that takes hours. Shooting the run will take about 4 hours rough and dirty. Post Processing is usually treble that.

Tell me again how £6 is expensive?

Bike ones our club usually has someone who photos for free and puts them on Facebook afterwards.

I think this is a big contributor to the perceived expense of £6 – I’ve got a fair few images that were uploaded for free by various photogs at different events. Most people buy a photo and don’t print it out, just whack it on Facebook, so a super high quality image isn’t really necessary and the free ones probably serve the purpose.

Hob-Nobs pic is great, if it was me I’d happily pay £15+ for the high-res file as its interesting enough to print out.

convert

So how much would people pay to spend half an hour with a photographer at a picturesque location (i.e they were located there and you booked a time slot) to get your very own ‘magazine cover shot’?

I would never book time as you describe above, but if I happenend to be at a race and a photographer took a picture that was “Dirt Magazine Cover” worthy I think the sky would be the limit. £100, maybe £200 if it was good enough. Of course I’d get the wife to buy it to me as a birthday present.

jimjam

…… but if I happenend to be at a race and a photographer took a picture that was “Dirt Magazine Cover” worthy I think the sky would be the limit. £100, maybe £200 if it was good enough.

Chatting to some pro sports togs that help us out from time to time, they’re lucky to get a ton for a back page picture in a national paper 😯

Quote from one of them; “Sports photography is probably the only industry where the customer decides what they want to pay”

“Sports photography is probably the only industry where the customer decides what they want to pay”

Strictly speaking, the customer decides the price in every industry. Supply and demand, innit.

I’m sure photographers don’t make much from events and I don’t think they’re being greedy – but I think some may be a little naive.

The point surely is whether £6 is still a reasonable price for an unprintable low-res run-of-the-mill-at-best shot that’s only going to be used on Facebook for a few days?

Price the not-so-good pics lower and you might sell a whole lot more and get the Facebook crowd on board.

I do a lot of events and there are limits to my vanity, so £6 has to be a pretty good pic.

I do quite a lot of races and I don’t think I’ve ever bought a picture. Most local road races have a few people throw up images after races but these are free. In any case the most I would do is stick it in a facebook album.

OF the bigger events I’ve never really found the photos that inspiring. I don’t particularly want a supersized picture of me riding a bike. I’d much rather have something like the one above that captures what the views and area were like as that is what my event was, not staring in a mirror.

£17.99 for a Velothon Wales photo, you do get the added benefit of being able to edit the photo’s composition if you’re not happy with the work of the professional.
These guys aren’t professionals and do a disservice to photographers.