Your advice would be appreciated

[Hacker]

One of the reasons I originally bought my camera last year was to photograph my wife at her various equestrian competitions which is usually one/three day events and hunter trial/cross country events. Whilst it has been a steep learning curve I have enjoyed it immensely and obviously I am still learning but my technique is now reasonable having studied her and other riders and being able to anticipate when to fire the shutter to gain the optimum image.

My wife has been very pleased with my attempts to date and she has shared the images on a couple of busy equestrian forums and the feed back has been very positive, to the extent that I am now getting requests to photograph other competitors.

Many of the events have photographers in attendance and whilst some are very good others do not seem to put much effort into getting a good image. I have seen some of the prints my wife has bought (prices are typically in the £10-£12 range for a 10 X 8 print) and if I was the photographer I would be embarrassed to offer that type of quality, my nitpicking ranges from poor subject framing to cluttered and distracting backgrounds etc. Typically cross country events are spread over a large area and in my experience it is not difficult to find a good viewpoint.

This idea had been festering for a while but what has brought it to the fore today is a link I followed from another thread on here to an on-line printing facility where you 10 x 8 prints are just 99p when ordering 20 or more, which seems a reasonable price.

Some of the photographers offer on site printing whilst others leave a business card with web details where prints can be ordered at a later date once the images are posted on the website, which brings me to my questions.

Obviously going into any business venture has pitfalls and I have a few questions specific to equestrian/sports photography:

1. Has anyone on here done anything similar and have any general advice they can share?

2. On site printing on web ordering? I realise there are pros and cons for each, one of the main ones being on-site power for laptop and printer. Another area of concern for me is that I have not done any printing, I always get them done commercially, but this is something I will be addressing soon. Obviously I have to do a cost analysis of consumables (paper, ink etc) and whilst I can see the merits of offering on-site and immediate printing it seems to be adding further complications as well as having to employ someone to print, handle orders and generally run that area. I also have to compare the costs (time and consumables) to the on-line printing cost mentioned above.

3. Equipment. At present I am using a D70 with Tokina 80-200mm ATX-Pro and I usually use a monopod. This will hopefully be upgraded this year starting with the glass and a D200 body as this offers better weatherproofing than the D70 which will become a back-up. Is there anything else experience has taught you I may need?

I apologise if this has gone on a bit but I wanted to give as much information as possible.

Thanks for reading and I hope you can help.

Colin.

 

[SammyC]

I think thats a very good post mate, no problem with too much information and I think you posed your questions very well!

Dod's you man on this one I think, if you search for threads started by him you should find a few covering some areas of your question.

My only contribution would be that photos printed by portable printers are not going to be as good as ones from a lab. Basically the image may be brilliant but after a couple of months the colours start to change with blacks going green etc. Maybe not what you want.

The best effort would be to be able to set up a website with online ordering. This is where they select the images they want and submit the request to you that way. Possibly more involved but it does mean that you just have to hand out cards with a web address on it.

HTH

 

[IanC_UK]

I think you need to speak to Dod !

 

[dod]

Sorry mate, just saw this and my first comment is I'm not surprised you're getting requests, that shot of your wife at the jump was superb

I ended up doing this by accident. My wifes into the endurance stuff and I took some shots of her and her friends and just did inkjets. They of course offered to pay and I told them not to bother as it was just a hobby.

Next thing I started to get phone calls from riders asking if I'd make sure I'd get them next time out and a ride organiser asking if I'd be "official" at the next ride. I think I'm booked for four this year now and have a couple of "portrait" shoots lined up for individuals, push those, nicely lucrative

To try to answer your questions though:

Q1 You've already mentioned things like location. Only other thing is to make sure the wife knows if you're there shooting you're not there helping here with rugs etc.

And most important of all is make sure the horses ears are up and pointing forwards when you take the shot

Q2. As you say on site printing is a PITA if you're on your own as it means you're not taking pictures. I try to avoid it but do have a collection of shots from previous outings preprinted on display boards to let people see what they get. I also have a pile of contact slips which people can complete to ask for a contact sheet of shots and I'll send it out once I've been through everything. That seemed to work pretty well last year.

I usually offer three print sizes, 6X4 which I can do on site with one of the selphy dye-subs. (I haven't used this live yet but trials at home suggest it should be fine) 8X10 and A4 I'll do on line. This year the laptop will be there as well so people can see shots up front, charged off the car, IF I have time. If you're doing online prints remember to leave plenty room when framing for cropping. The number of times I've had a nice shot which loses the feet or head when printing at 8X10 is embarassing.

Sammy's suggestion of a webby for ordering is a good one and it's my next project now I've got the motocross one out of the way.

3. Nothing wrong with the equipment you have; spare cards, maybe a standard lens, batteries, usual stuff you'd use for a normal day out. Sandwiches, water and a couple of bars of chocolate .

Sorry if this doesn't make much sense, typing between phone calls :nono: