first photography job advice needed

hayley.price

hayley.price

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hayley
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Okay so I have my first photography job coming up I'm rather excited, but Im unsure of a few things could you help?

its a child's 5 aside football match,

Firstly I don't have a website and was thinking if selling them through my facebook page would this be ok to do?

Secondly do I need to take a laptop or something with me incase they want to see the photos on the day?
 
how are you planning to sell through facebook? i.e. take orders and money. it would probably be worth looking at something like photobox or other photo ordering systems in the short term.

wouldnt worry about a laptop if youre not printing on the day. get some cards/flyers made up with a link to the photos.

when is the job?

if you havent already then now is also the time to get some insurance with public liability sorted.
 
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i'll leave others more experienced to leave tips on selling/printing/promotion. All i will add though is, when i shot a kids football party i got them all to have a penalty shoot out at the end. This gave me the chance to get behind the goal and get individual shots of every child so that mummy can see her little poppet scoring a goal. I got 3 or 4 shots of each child as they hit the ball and then the celebration of scoring! Don't forget to get one of the keeper though. They went down a treat! Good luck!
 
Don't forget to put a large w/mark on the shots that your putting on f/book, that stops anyone else using them reducing your chance of sales
 
bruno106a said:
Don't forget to put a large w/mark on the shots that your putting on f/book, that stops anyone else using them reducing your chance of sales
Click to expand...

youd think..

its quite common place to find our shots all over facebook including our very intrusive watermark. if you can find them facebook are very quick at removing them once reported, its the ones with locked down profiles you cant see that youll never know about..
 
Just remember Hayley.. the job isn't about taking photos, it's about getting paid for taking photos.. Hopefully you've plenty of time to plan what people will pay for and how they can do it ;)
 
Right well as for selling on my facebook page my plan was, cards with address to facebook page, albam with all the photos in all numbers up, they look throught the albam chose there photos and then send me a message with what photos they wanted, then either pay by paypal or by post ( I would recomend tracked but if the money doesn't arrive I hold no resposbility). Photos will be water marked on the facebook albam. I am thinking of offering uncopyrighted photos on facebook for £1 per photos, then a Range of print sizes starting at £4 for a 6*8 print and prices increase with size, was also going to offer for multiple photos them all put onto a cd for £15 .

It Isint till June 16th so i have a while to sort it out just want to be prepaired, and can someone tell me more about public liability insurance, is it a must have?
 
I'm not being paided to take the photos, how its working out is I make a donation of £25 to the kids football club, then I sell the photos. I wasn't sure about doing it at first but i think its a good opitunity for me so I'm going to do it. The manager asked a photographer friend of mine but as she is booked for a wedding on the day she put me forward for it.
 
If you sell photos you're being paid to take them. If you're not in the mindset that you're taking photos to sell you risk taking the shots you want, rather than the one's the clients want - i.e. it's not about the goals, it's about capturing every player in a good light/pose. Miss just one player and you risk having a set of parents and a child complaining loudly (have you got a friend can help tick-off the shirt numbers as you call them out?).. ..

It's a good opportunity, both to take photos and to pick-up on the business of selling photos (taking them is the easy bit). Are you able to make a worthwhile margin on £4/print? (print cost, postage/delivery costs, Paypal charges).

The risk of letting the customer get away is that they'll forget about you. The captive audience exists at half-time when there's still (hopefully) the optimism that either side could win, come full-time and everyone wants to get home (and the losing side is perhaps less likely to want a memento).
 
If its in June then you have plenty of time to get some sort of web page and proper ordering sorted. My first job I had 2 weeks notice and managed to get a website online, albeit with a fudged DIY ordering system using paypals free buttons which was far from ideal. Make it as simple as possible to order otherwise people won't bother and/or use your watermarked images instead.

£1 for a low res Facebook shot is cheap. Ours are £2 dropping to £1.50 for 5+ that's 750px on the long edge, med quality jpg with logo in a corner.

Insurance and public liability is a must, someone trips over your kit bag/monopod and breaks their ankle and they go after you for damages. That'll be a costly affair. A tackle comes in by the sideline and wipes you out breaking your lens.. Etc etc.
 
Using photobox is simple and an easy way to manage payment, plus I would not pay the £25 to be there, instead offer to pay £1 from each photo sold if you have too otherwise you are going to be out of pocket.
If you do use photobox then get the password printed on the cards so that when you hand them out its straight forward and don't forget you woll need to spend some time processing the shots which will include cropping where necessary so that you can present the shots in the best way possible.
good luck and try to enjoy.
 
More with the website is that I'm not earning enought to keep it running and I wouldn't know were to start making one that can take payments, n I'm too bone idear to get a free one as I don't like the quality of the website

As for priceing if you have any better idears please let me know as i have no idear on prices for this kinda thing
 
hayley.price said:
More with the website is that I'm not earning enought to keep it running and I wouldn't know were to start making one that can take payments, n I'm too bone idear to get a free one as I don't like the quality of the website

As for priceing if you have any better idears please let me know as i have no idear on prices for this kinda thing
Click to expand...

About 20 quid a year for domain name and hosting, plenty of template around the net and link it to photobox. Job done.

Do it half cocked several times (and risk customers not taking you seriously) or do it right once..
 
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personally i like 'amazing internet' but there are loads , other comon ones include wordpress.com (as opposed wordpress.org which is web software), clickpic , zenfolio etc
 
Get your own URL, some cheap hosting (TSOhost) and put up a simple wordpress page for free. Stick a link in for a Photobox pro gallery (free and easy to use) That could cost you less than £30.

When the money comes in you can upgrade the wordpress site with a quality template. It's simple, easy, scaleable, there are many recommendations for Wordpress templates in the computing section. The advantages of the expensive ones are control and ease of use. You don't need to learn a line of code to get exactly what you want.

Bear in mind that most of the simple and easy solutions miss out on scaleable. Just look for how many posts you'll see in here about leaving behind clickpic etc as people outgrow them.
 
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