MAKING MONEY FROM MOTORSPORT EVENTS

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michael
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Hi,my name is mike,i am a new member,my main interest in photography so far has been wildlife,i have been an events photographer part time helping out several pros,ive even been a second photographer at several weddings,and other events,my question is this,can I attend motorsport events with my camera and start taking shots with the intention of selling them,if they were good enough
of course,and who might be my potential customers,without treading on any ones toes,????
 
Hi Mike, and welcome to the forum.

- Yes you can attend motorsports events and take photographs.
- Can you do so with the intention of selling them ? - well that depends on the terms and conditions of entry to the specific venue
- Your potential customers would be wide and varied - the circuit, teams, drivers/riders, spectators, sponsors, newspapers, magazines and websites
- Treading on anyones toes - well there might be an exclusivity clause it it is a an events or track-day, you might well be competing with a circuit photographer, and of course any other photographer there - especially those with media accreditation

The only way to find out for sure is to contact the circuit, and series if applicable, and ask the question....

Now whether you can make any money from it - that is a completely different question.
 
Waste of time m8..................WHY ................far to many at it and others just giving pics away..........go and enjoy motorsport by all means ..............A lot of hte circuits etc etc ect are closed shops.......to get trackside you will need ins and then the fun starts ................thast the best advice I can give you


Dave
 
thanks,meonshore and corsa for your input,i don't want to make great amounts of money but just have fun taking photos and perhaps sell a few to fund my hobby,corsa your comment wast of time mate!! surely you have to start somewhere,thanks anyway!!!!
 
If you look at shots posted on here you will realize that your quality will have to be really high, which takes a lot of practice and then you have to deal with the very valid points mentioned by the posters above . Just treat it as hobby and pick up experience a long the way, that is all that I am doing for now.
 
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To answer directly, entry tickets expressly forbid the sale or distribution of photographs by spectators. So doing so would be at your own risk, some folks do.... In fact posting pics in here is a breach of the same terms, but it would be a very dull forum section otherwise. In my experience there is very little interest in general for Motorsport photography, you need to have contacts, buyers and accreditation in place before you can make money.

This isn't an attempt to put you off, like you mention... Everyone has to start some where, but I think you'll be surprised when you go to a relatively small event like the British GT and suddenly realise that 90% of the spectators have exactly the same plan as you.

I think we all hope that our stuff is good enough to get plucked from obscurity in reality though quality is not really the only differentiating factor. Stick around these forums and you'll see some great images from pros and amateurs a like, they will all help you progress but chances are you will be better off sticking to weddings for funding purposes
 
Thankyou PB27 and Graphix501 i appreciate your input i have looked at both your flickr photstreams and you both have geat photographic captures,which i will be trying to emulate,when enough experience might allow.i am a bit confused though, are you, or are you not allowed to take photos at such events and sell them,and or post them for viewing,and if tickets expressly forbid it and people are blatently doing it,what are the consequenses !!??? if any? i wouln't want to find myself on the wrong side of the law!!!
 
:) I'm just an amateur as well. Unless you have media accreditation I.e a bib and an editor chasing you for images you may not sell photographs. For instance on the back of every silverstone ticket it says photographs may be taken for personal use only and public or commercial distribution is strictly prohibited.

In regards to what the consequences are, they could sue you :) this is only really likely if you are actually making decent money and/or are impacting on accredited medias revenue. In effect if you give someone enough of a reason to sue you, they probably will. Posting on a photography forum for critique isn't really worth the time to pursue, but halving an accredited track day photographers income by undercutting them as a spectator would likely land you in trouble.

I imagine it's just a case of common sense, if you want to make money from it you have to pursue the proper channels, there are numerous threads on here that deal with obtaining accreditation. As has already been mentioned there's often far too many hoops to jump through with far too few places available. You have to be either exceptionally great at what you do, exceptionally lucky to know the right people or an exceptionally good bullsh!!!er.... The same for virtually any other job in the creative industry that's in high demand
 
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I've been at a kart track where I was the only guy there with a camera , when talking with the circuit owner I was told that I can't sell as they have an 'official' photographer. He then said that he doesn't make any money from it so doesn't even bother turning up ! The owner then contacts me for images to use on the circuits website :( .
Most competitors love looking at photos of themselves but won't cough up for the privilege.
 
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thankyou guys certainly food for thought,thankyou so much for your input!!!!
 
Most competitors love looking at photos of themselves but won't cough up for the privilege.

Speaking without any of experience this, id imagine this is where the entrepreneurial side of photography is key. As in any competitive business market you need to promote your product, stoke demand and drive continued sales. The problem is that your customer base is exceptionally niche and your products directly compete with themselves. I.e for karting where the spectator following is small if not tiny, of those spectators fewer still will be willing to buy photographs (simply because unless you are a die hard fan you're not gonna want pictures of cars in your living room).... so that leaves the competitors, they are more likely to purchase... but how many do you reasonably expect they will buy? 2 a year maybe? possibly a few more if you get a few action/crashes.. most people don't have a house full of photos of themselves on the wall, so if you manage to sell one its unlikely they are going to buy another for a while. How much can you sell them for £10 max for an A4 print maybe?... it quickly runs towards a pointless activity at this level.

If I had the time or the offers I would offer photography as a component of a PR drive. If these racers are serious about their prospects, they are going to need sponsors, support etc... I'd imagine someone would be much more willing to pay an annual retainer for a service that could provide them with a promotional website to attract sponsorship, social media management to engage with supporters etc.. yadda yadda you need to ensure you are offering more than just a print service, there's literally too much competition to bother with it.

The higher up the ranks you aim the more spectators and the less interested competitors get, its also more competitive. Grass routes is where the money is for starting out but you have to be a lot more than just a good photographer until you are famous :) Just my naive opinion :D I'm sure one of the Pros will be able to add to or shoot me down
 
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Thanks again for the continued input, i guess its going to be a steep learning curve,there must be money it somwhere along the line,when you consider the photographers lined up with their thousand of pounds worth of camera gear and their big white canon l lenses,but as you say , it may well help to be really experienced or know the right people in the right places, i'll just have to keep practising and see where it leads to!!!
 
I've been at a kart track where I was the only guy there with a camera , when talking with the circuit owner I was told that I can't sell as they have an 'official' photographer. He then said that he doesn't make any money from so doesn't even bother turning up ! The owner then contacts me for images to use on the circuits website :( .
Most competitors love looking at photos of themselves but won't cough up for the privilege.

Charge for the Photos (venue)... you would need to target Stag dos/parties for any chance to sell photos and most likely instant print.
 
Speaking without any of experience this, id imagine this is where the entrepreneurial side of photography is key. As in any competitive business market you need to promote your product, stoke demand and drive continued sales. The problem is that your customer base is exceptionally niche and your products directly compete with themselves. I.e for karting where the spectator following is small if not tiny, of those spectators fewer still will be willing to buy photographs (simply because unless you are a die hard fan you're not gonna want pictures of cars in your living room).... so that leaves the competitors, they are more likely to purchase... but how many do you reasonably expect they will buy? 2 a year maybe? possibly a few more if you get a few action/crashes.. most people don't have a house full of photos of themselves on the wall, so if you manage to sell one its unlikely they are going to buy another for a while. How much can you sell them for £10 max for an A4 print maybe?... it quickly runs towards a pointless activity at this level.

If I had the time or the offers I would offer photography as a component of a PR drive. If these racers are serious about their prospects, they are going to need sponsors, support etc... I'd imagine someone would be much more willing to pay an annual retainer for a service that could provide them with a promotional website to attract sponsorship, social media management to engage with supporters etc.. yadda yadda you need to ensure you are offering more than just a print service, there's literally too much competition to bother with it.

The higher up the ranks you aim the more spectators and the less interested competitors get, its also more competitive. Grass routes is where the money is for starting out but you have to be a lot more than just a good photographer until you are famous :) Just my naive opinion :D I'm sure one of the Pros will be able to add to or shoot me down

This I have certainly learnt over the past year . In that time I've sold a few to regulars, sent a few off to a magazine at their request and supplied that circuit with shots from one of their meetings , promoting my name at least .
 
Charge for the Photos (venue)... you would need to target Stag dos/parties for any chance to sell photos and most likely instant print.

Indeed, this is where the 'official circuit tog' profits.
 
there must be money it somewhere along the line,when you consider the photographers lined up with their thousand of pounds worth of camera gear and their big white canon l lenses
Be sure not to get confused about the order in which things are achieved, the togs you see at F1 events and the like with expensive gear are established professionals in the field already. They have this gear because it is a necessary requirement to deliver for their profession, they are not beginners like you or I and just rocked up on a jolly, the majority work for major photographic agencies like LAT, Getty or Sutton and have been doing so for many years. They are not there because they have expensive gear, they have expensive gear because they are there.

There is no doubt some money available, but what we are saying is there are millions of 'photographers' vying for maybe 10 spots all of which are occupied by established, respected and proven people working for major magazines. The lesser events will still be frequented by professional photographers that either subsidise motorsport with other things like wedding or event photography etc and more still who do it as a second job. So while I'm not saying its impossible it is most definitely naive to expect anything to happen :) in the nicest possible way.

Out of interest how old are you? The reason I ask is you can try and get involved in competitions etc like MSA young photographer of the year etc. there's been a few winners from this forum..and their work is..spectacular! :D that's your, mine, every other hopeful photographers benchmark to aim for...
 
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Thanks again for the continued input, i guess its going to be a steep learning curve,there must be money it somwhere along the line,when you consider the photographers lined up with their thousand of pounds worth of camera gear and their big white canon l lenses,but as you say , it may well help to be really experienced or know the right people in the right places, i'll just have to keep practising and see where it leads to!!!

The people you can see with thousands of pounds worth of bodies and big white Canon lenses are:

1) Accrediated Media - who might be staffers being paid a salary to be there by their paper/magazine/agency and have kit supplied, or be freelancers with a guaranteed commission
2) They might be freelancers on spec hoping for a sale and with a mix of other work which pays the bills
3) They might be hobbyists who love the sport and their hobby to an extent that £10-£20k of photographic kit is part of the fun and not intended to even be covered by sales let alone turn a profit

Don't underestimate the money people will spend on a hobby, or how much they are prepared to do for no pay/fees to have images taken as a result of that hobby used by someone either privately or commercially.
 
The people you can see with thousands of pounds worth of bodies and big white Canon lenses are:

1) Accrediated Media - who might be staffers being paid a salary to be there by their paper/magazine/agency and have kit supplied, or be freelancers with a guaranteed commission
2) They might be freelancers on spec hoping for a sale and with a mix of other work which pays the bills
3) They might be hobbyists who love the sport and their hobby to an extent that £10-£20k of photographic kit is part of the fun and not intended to even be covered by sales let alone turn a profit

Don't underestimate the money people will spend on a hobby, or how much they are prepared to do for no pay/fees to have images taken as a result of that hobby used by someone either privately or commercially.

^Said a bit more eloquently than I managed :)
 
The people you can see with thousands of pounds worth of bodies and big white Canon lenses are:


3) They might be hobbyists who love the sport and their hobby to an extent that £10-£20k of photographic kit is part of the fun and not intended to even be covered by sales let alone turn a profit

Don't underestimate the money people will spend on a hobby, or how much they are prepared to do for no pay/fees to have images taken as a result of that hobby used by someone either privately or commercially.

To true, can only speak from a BSB point, but I reckon there is more big lenses on the speccy side than the media side.
 
my advice on this is to look at club level motorsport events to start off, if you click on my website link bellow you will see what i do. i cant speak for everyone but last year i did pretty well from it although its hard work and often cold wet and muddy. Just as well i love the sport i shoot and im happy up to my neck in mud :)

i will say you need to be a bit of an entrepreneur to work this and be good with people and have the ability to talk yourself into where you want to shoot...
 
my advice on this is to look at club level motorsport events to start off, if you click on my website link bellow you will see what i do. i cant speak for everyone but last year i did pretty well from it although its hard work and often cold wet and muddy. Just as well i love the sport i shoot and im happy up to my neck in mud :)

i will say you need to be a bit of an entrepreneur to work this and be good with people and have the ability to talk yourself into where you want to shoot...

You seem to share the same enthusiasm for your sport as I do for mine, I used to race (karts) and then went through it all again with my son, now I get my thrills from being behind the lens. I think the enthusiasm part is the main thing that is needed, that includes the cold, wet and mud !

Great job on the website by the way, it is something that I need to do soon.
 
Thank you all for the various input,much appreciated!
 
All good advice... you can make a living from Motorsports, but it does depend on what your shooting, how your planning to market your images & yourself... The best way with all sports is to start right at the bottom & try to make a name for yourself or just find a way of shooting it differently... Like Suggs I cover MX.. have done for the last 6 years since retiring from riding, I starting shooting for my sons clubs, then found a practise track to work with, I now cover 3 clubs, MX GTcup... The main thing is, find something you love, that's the thing to shoot... you will always shoot your best stuff, if the images are good then they will sell..

And how are you planning to sell... Website? hard work, I get about 10-15% of my income from my website, Christmas yes its a bonus then... The best way to sell images is onsite, you can make good money, we run a bus that has 6 viewing screens all networked to my comp, running Photoparata, customers can come in & view their images, place an order & receive their prints 15 mins later... this can work..

Then the only other things to consider... public liability ins for your customers, trackside ins for yourself & riders, accident ins for yourself, gear ins.....lol, then petrol, regular repairs & maintenance... & nows there's an uncle bob at every track trying to get trackside so that he can stick his 1000+ images of blurry bikes miles away racing....
 
I can only speak of BSB and will say that more people make money selling on E-Bay than most accredited togs do trackside but you run the risk of MSVR having you up for selling them if they catch you.

Some accredited photographers pay for a commercial licence (Double Red) and others just seem to be turned a blind eye over selling on there own websites (No names mentioned but could name a few that do a lot free for MSVR) others like myself are only permitted to sell to teams,riders,media and sponsors but most of these are now supplied for free via public posting on Facebook etc or offering free to mags and online media for the sake of a credit or a free pass from a team for the weekend.

If it was not for the fact that I love the sport I would of given up long ago as I have a full time job that supports my part time job of photography and had thought for many years about how good it would be to become accredited and make money from my hobby like all the other guys I had seen the other side of the fence with big white lenses living such a dream of a life and job but once I got there I soon found out 80% were just like me. A large amount have very good jobs or run there own businesses not connected in any way with photography and are self funding despite what they say but a few do work for agencies and I mean a few, can more than likely count them on one hand to be honest (This includes some WSB and Moto GP togs that supply for free).

The biggest problem is that no one makes any money from the teams to the riders except a few of the big names none get paid a salary and most of riders pay for there seat on the bike either via sponsors or by having jobs themselves, add to this the budgets for running the teams have also become a lot smaller(No Samsung Honda this year due to funding!!!) you start to get the picture that the last thing any of them want to do is pay for pictures and even more so now that the level of gear the other side of the fence as mentioned before is far beyond what most accredited togs have at there disposal.

The one thing you will find is that as per the article Graphix501 posted the other day most of the people that make money from motorsport photography do so because they are very good at photography and could produce better shots with basic kit than most can with the big primes and pro bodies such as and this is only a few that spring to mind Desantnik,Nick Dungan and Gary Parravani all of which I would say produce outstanding, original and saleable work compared to most. If you intend to try and make money you will really have to be producing work not only of a very high standard but also find a unique perspective (Such as London Bikers have with BSB) that you can push out so as to stand out from the crowd of hundreds of others trying to make money from an ever decreasing pot.
 
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^Agree.... But I think you missed your own name out :)

------

As above.. here's some of your competition/inspiration :)

Garry - http://www.xynamic.com/
Nick - http://nickdunganphotography.co.uk/
Desantnik - http://www.blzeebub.com/
Glen - http://www.freezeframe-photography.co.uk/

Sigh.. it makes you want to sit in the corner and sulk dunnit ;)

Very kind of you to say so Jonathan and thats another tenner i owe you when we get to meet up in the future (y)

I still consider myself not to be in the same league as the chaps that i mentioned to be honest and i do not have the business head or vision of most,i just love what i do and am lucky enough at the moment to do it and without question this will be my final year if i cant make it pay for itself.

As mentioned before you would be better off setting up an event photography business and covering local sporting events including dog and horse shows etc and not just motorsport to stand any chance of getting some income,a great incentive to clubs is to offer your attendance for free and also provide a percentage of total takings for being the exclusive photographer there for the event. I have worked before with a chap that would take upto £1100+ a day and would give the club 10% of gross takings from each day and to be honest i was amazed at just how many shots he sold to mums and dads over the weekend and most of the images i would normally of sent straight to the recycle bin but all the punters cared about was a sharp picture of their son or daughter and dont even think about wheel blur or depth of field like we all do.
 
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If it's money you want.. Then become an event tog, but you do have to sell a little of your soul, some of your more arty shots will become fewer & you'll become an extreme portrait tog instead...
 
Very informative couple of posts there Glen, I'm just putting my gear on eBay :) .
I've certainly learnt a bit from this thread thanks all for sharing your experiences . Absolute quality photos in those links that you posted too Jonathon , I'm just aiming at getting something approaching that, and keeping it a weekend hobby.
 
My ears were burning.. glad to hear its only nice things being said :)

The best thing i can do for you is give you a picture of just what the market place is like.
Every season i would say that the amount of photographers wanting to sell motorsport photos doubles in size, and the demand isnt particularly big in the first place.
You dont need to be particularly good at motorsport photography to be one of the few that earn from it, but you do need some business skills.
The way to earn money in business is find a niche where there is more demand than supply. As i already mentioned, this business is the opposite way around. Its a market place where suppliers give away their product for free.
One way to look at it is if you wanted to start a coffee shop in a street which already had 4 starbucks, 3 costas and 5 caffe neros. Its going to be practically impossible to make any money. So you either do your research and take your coffee shop somewhere where there isnt any competition but still some demand, or you bloody mindedly stick to your plan and do it better than the big coffee shops in your street.
BTCC is the street with 12 coffee shops, and British GT is the street next door :)
 
I have followed this with interest...here is a photo from last years f1 young driver test at Silverstone..with kit like that I hope he is getting paid..


IMGP5311
by a1paul, on Flickr
 
also a thing that not been mentioned is that even an accredited photographer isn't allowed to sell pics at an event (going off the t&c I seen at events) you need to pay for a stall to sell and I know at msv bsb and btcc this is £1000 a weekend.
 
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