Photographers at Sportives

[benb]

As there on public roads theres nothing to stop you but the "official"photographer will have a link from the organizers website you would need to stick flyers under peoples windscreen wipers or find another way to enable people to contact you.

The photographer at the Merlin Sportive wanted £22 to email you the file or £13 to post a 7x5 .I would have liked one but not at that rate though I do believe they donate a percentage to the charities supported by the event.

Nice one, might give it a go.

 

[Ludwig]

Can you not find a friend, relative, spouse, mistress etc who will stand at the roadside and take a few pictures of you free of charge.

 

[arallsopp]

Depends on the event, but I'd be sorely tempted to buy the digital neg. If I were doing them weekly or monthly, maybe not, but if its a 'something special' I think I'd just count is as part of the entry fee. After all, a year down the line, an additional £5 (or even £25) won't be missed, but having a picture to remind/corroborate your story is near priceless.

Evey's marathon photo is still up, and I've never seen her looking so proud. Its a joy EVERY day.

 

[amasidlover]

As a keen amateur photographer and someone who effectively does work for hire in another sphere I can understand the photographer's dilemma. At the end of the day they have to pay for transport to the event, depreciation on their camera and lenses and pay themselves a reasonable wage for the day's work - plus sifting through the images, maintaining the website and the labour of actually getting the stuff printed and stuffed into the envelope adds up surprisingly quickly.

In my professional sphere there are lots of keen amateurs who come in thinking they could do the same for much less and then forget to actually value their time... This is something that infuriates pro-photographers on the photography forums, but I don't actually have that much sympathy - if there are so many amateurs out there who can do just as good a job as you do during your day job that you can't get customers, then maybe you're simply not good enough...

There is also the challenge of pricing to encourage enough volume of sales while still covering costs if relatively few people and its a difficult balancing act. If it were me I would forget the 9x6 / 7x5 option and offer the digital version instead with nice big prints at £15-£20; since the cost difference in the materials is only £3-4 between 9x6 16x20 but with no difference in labour people will feel they're getting much better value than for a tiny little print at £10...

 

[sportsunday]

Having done my first ever Sportive i thought i would order a picture from the official photographers website. £9.75 for a 7 x 5 print I could just about accept but an additional £3.50 for postage was going one step too far for me.


Am I out of touch with prices or is this taking the P.

As professional photographers www.sportsunday.co.uk let us say a few words. When we first started we put a price on our pics that we felt were cheap enough to buy (£3.50 per hi- res download) and yet was enough to make it worth our while. We have had e-mails from others in the business slagging us off for being to cheap one guy even suggested we all charge the same price, I pointed out that price fixing is illegal.
we consider the price as value for money not cheap. At 9 or 10 quid and postage on top it's too much. We say if it's too expensive don't buy, these guys will either stop doing it are drop their prices.
The pics can be part of the event but not if you feel you are being ripped off.

 

[Alembicbassman]

The pro camera 15-20 years ago was a Canon EOS1 or Nikon F4/F5 35mm job with 35-70mm 70-200mm f/2.8 L series glass and a couple of primes, about £5000 worth. Shooting 20+ rolls of film, contact sheets etc,,. all added up.

Guys these days I see using Nikon D300 and Canon 50D consumer cameras with consumer lenses, bunging the cards into a Mac with a couple of hundred quids worth of imaging software and hey presto.

Workflow is a lot faster with digital.

Too many people these days calling themselves a pro.

I've seen so many bad 'pro' photos from weddings and events with very basic errors, the sad thing is the uneducated seem happy with the photos and pay the high prices.

I good pro photo of a sports star in action can sell for several thousand pounds to a press agency.

My D90 shoots 4.5 frames per second the Nikon D3s shoots up to 11 frames per second, which is a must for high speed sports.

I took some photos at the Giro d'Italia Rome ITT with a very basic SLR last year, I'll try and put them up.

 

[johnnyh]

I dont think the cost is too bad, the poor bloke with the camera gets himself there, with equipment, spends all day getting images, spends time processing them and displaying them, and then posts them out. (costs of print materials, printer, envelope, stamp and his time in processing the order/packing/sending), and that is before his business costs.

I doubt he is driving a Bentley.

the ones that I think are a rip are the school photogs. No real skill set, and well over the odds.

 

[sportsunday]

So how does one get to be a photographer at the event. I'm a keen photographer in my spare time, and I think I'm reasonable.
I'd definitely be cheaper than the ones above!

Why don't you e-mail or ring us to discuss working for us. Theres not a lot of money in it but if you like a great day with smashing people and cover your petrol then it's great.
www.sportsunday.co.uk

 

[Banjo]

Why don't you e-mail or ring us to discuss working for us. Theres not a lot of money in it but if you like a great day with smashing people and cover your petrol then it's great.
www.sportsunday.co.uk

Some terrific images on the slide show on your website homepage. One of those with me on ,I wouldnt have grumbled aboput the price :-) Well maybe not so much.....

 

[Veloscot]

I have to say the photographers at the Selkirk Sportive this year did a very professional job. I bought about 5 images from them as they were stunning images. They offered hi-res images at £7.45 and low-res images at £4.45. To be honest the low-res images were sufficiently large enough to keep as a record and yet still printable so I needn't have spent the extra and purchased the hi-res images. Anyway I thought they were worth the money and also I have no decent images of me cycling to prove to my family that I actually do take part in these gruelling events!!

 

[jimboalee]

That doesn't often happen at my end of the peleton!

I was once snapped near the top of some race up Alp d'Huez, where I was not going at all well, and did something similar. "C'est pas gentil, ca", said the man with the Brownie and I did feel rather ashamed when I had calmed down.

Thumb on nose with fingers wagging is another favourite.

 

[CopperBrompton]

A 7x5 digital print costs about 5p

First, take the salary the photographer needs to earn to keep body & soul together. Let's be modest and call that £20k.

Add on the annualised cost of their kit, which in the days when most pro photographers replace their bodies every two years to keep up with developments, is a lot more expensive than it used to be. You always need at least one main body and one backup at around £3500 each (yes, your D90 is a lovely camera but it isn't weather-sealed, doesn't write to two cards simultaneously, doesn't take full-frame lenses, etc), so two bodies replaced every two years is £3500/year. Add on lens replacement (less frequent), flashguns (fairly frequent replacement), bags, etc, etc, and you won't get much under £6k/year.

Ditto computer kit (high-end PC needed for speedy processing, high-end monitor plus calibration kit for exposure and colour accuracy, high-end printer for volume), say £2k/year.

Event photography often means working early or late or both, and carrying a lot of kit, which means you need a reliable car. Depreciation and running costs say £4k/year.

Insurances (public liability, kit, etc), say £1k year.

Miscellaneous other expenses (advertising, websites, general office stuff, heat & light, etc, etc), say £5k/year.

So before the photographer has even got to the event, that's £38k/year. Let's say they have an event every single weekend, that's 50 events. So before they even press the shutter, they need to make £38k in 50 events, which means they need £760 from each event just to break even.

Let's say there are 200 competitors in an event, and 20% will buy a photo. They need to make £19 from each of those competitors just to break even. That's after they've paid the 5p for the print and quid for the envelope and postage.

So no, a print doesn't cost 5p when you want it taken by a full-time pro photographer. And sure, an amateur or weekender can do it for less, because they don't need it to pay their mortgage and gas bill.

(Yes, I'm a photographer. No, I don't do event photography because it's too poorly paid.)

 

[sportsunday]

First, take the salary the photographer needs to earn to keep body & soul together. Let's be modest and call that £20k.

Add on the annualised cost of their kit, which in the days when most pro photographers replace their bodies every two years to keep up with developments, is a lot more expensive than it used to be. You always need at least one main body and one backup at around £3500 each (yes, your D90 is a lovely camera but it isn't weather-sealed, doesn't write to two cards simultaneously, doesn't take full-frame lenses, etc), so two bodies replaced every two years is £3500/year. Add on lens replacement (less frequent), flashguns (fairly frequent replacement), bags, etc, etc, and you won't get much under £6k/year.

Ditto computer kit (high-end PC needed for speedy processing, high-end monitor plus calibration kit for exposure and colour accuracy, high-end printer for volume), say £2k/year.

Event photography often means working early or late or both, and carrying a lot of kit, which means you need a reliable car. Depreciation and running costs say £4k/year.

Insurances (public liability, kit, etc), say £1k year.

Miscellaneous other expenses (advertising, websites, general office stuff, heat & light, etc, etc), say £5k/year.

So before the photographer has even got to the event, that's £38k/year. Let's say they have an event every single weekend, that's 50 events. So before they even press the shutter, they need to make £38k in 50 events, which means they need £760 from each event just to break even.

Let's say there are 200 competitors in an event, and 20% will buy a photo. They need to make £19 from each of those competitors just to break even. That's after they've paid the 5p for the print and quid for the envelope and postage.

So no, a print doesn't cost 5p when you want it taken by a full-time pro photographer. And sure, an amateur or weekender can do it for less, because they don't need it to pay their mortgage and gas bill.

(Yes, I'm a photographer. No, I don't do event photography because it's too poorly paid.)

 

[sportsunday]

A good breakdown of costs but the takeup of photos is nearer 10% so on something like Ripon Triathlon with 750 athletes you would expect to sell 70 shots approx. If you do this for the money you're on a loser but if you really enjoy it it's worth the day out.

 

[PaulB]

Having done my first ever Sportive i thought i would order a picture from the official photographers website. £9.75 for a 7 x 5 print I could just about accept but an additional £3.50 for postage was going one step too far for me.


Am I out of touch with prices or is this taking the P.

Be fair; after taking a photograph of your fizzog, his camera would have broken so he's probably trying to recoup costs to repair it

But seriously, that does sound dear. I much prefer buying the electronic version (usually between £2 and £5 in most case) and then it's yours to do what you want with it.