Photos on santas lap.... How do you do it?

[badrotation]

I am comfortable with the photography portion of it, but how are these normally organized? I do alot of senior portraits and photojournalism stuff, but I have never been involved with anything this fast paced.

We do annual 'Polar Express' excursions from thanksgiving, till christmas (Our locomotive was used for the sounds and the CGI design in the movie), and this coming year, they want photos of kids on santas lap.

The train ride is 1:15 each way, with 1:30-1:45 spent at the 'north pole' (saginaw county fairgrounds). There are roughly 300 people on each train, and very limited time for pictures (Like I said, an hour and a half).

How would it be possible to handle that type of volume, and have their photos ready before the train leaves?

There has been talk of having folders for the pictures pre-made, and just using polaroids (we would be charging $5 for a picture in a folder/card type thing). But obviously, polaroids are not the best quality. The plus side to polaroids, is that pretty much anyone could use it, and since I need to be working on the train for a few of the runs, it would be nice to be able to easily pass it off to someone (with a quick crash course in photography).


Anyway, I would like everyones thoughts on the matter, and how you would go about doing it.

The price per picture cant be much above $5, since the passengers already pay a large amount for the ticket ($60, and we sell out very quickly every year).


Thanks.

[gmen]

I'm not going to attempt to answer the question... as I have no experience of santa's lap.

However, I will say a big well done for planning so far ahead!

---- Gavin

[TSEE]

I am comfortable with the photography portion of it, but how are these normally organized? I do alot of senior portraits and photojournalism stuff, but I have never been involved with anything this fast paced.

We do annual 'Polar Express' excursions from thanksgiving, till christmas (Our locomotive was used for the sounds and the CGI design in the movie), and this coming year, they want photos of kids on santas lap.

The train ride is 1:15 each way, with 1:30-1:45 spent at the 'north pole' (saginaw county fairgrounds). There are roughly 300 people on each train, and very limited time for pictures (Like I said, an hour and a half).

How would it be possible to handle that type of volume, and have their photos ready before the train leaves?

There has been talk of having folders for the pictures pre-made, and just using polaroids (we would be charging $5 for a picture in a folder/card type thing). But obviously, polaroids are not the best quality. The plus side to polaroids, is that pretty much anyone could use it, and since I need to be working on the train for a few of the runs, it would be nice to be able to easily pass it off to someone (with a quick crash course in photography).


Anyway, I would like everyones thoughts on the matter, and how you would go about doing it.

The price per picture cant be much above $5, since the passengers already pay a large amount for the ticket ($60, and we sell out very quickly every year).


Thanks.

I have no experience with this type stuff at all, but I've seen places offer something like this, maybe it would work for you?

At the "north pole" have your setup where you take the photos, digitally. Hook the camera up so the parents can see the picture on a monitor, if they ok send it down to the bottom of the mountain/end stop where there's a crew that print those. That way all you have to worry about is taking the photos at the north pole, and then a crew have the time it takes the train to get to the end stop to print them up, perhaps something like a one hour machine could do the job, it would be a step up from poloroids altho not top notch quality.

Like I said I've seen other places use a similar technique and since you have limited time AT the north pole printing there isn't optimal, but since there's a train ride back down, why not send those pictures to the end station for printing where the guests can pick them up as they leave?

Anyways...just an idea...

[BIGTUFFGUY]

you said you sell out fast at 60$
so those people can afford it.
5$ a photo isnt out of the questions. make it a good quality photo and sell it for 10$!