Hacker
TPer Emeritus
- Messages
- 7,625
- Name
- Colin
- Edit My Images
- Yes
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.
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.