Youth Sports - Event Photography - Need Tips

[Knightshade]

Greetings, I'm looking for some tips on things that I should consider, look out for, etc.

A friend and I have setup a modest photography business. We have the ability to print onsite and our target market are parents who want the pictures right then. He and I take pics and his wife will run the booth. We will have a website soon, already registered the domain name, biggest speed bump right now is getting the logo designed. (Which of course slows down the website, business cards, etc.)

At any rate, we have two opportunities, one for soccer and one for little league baseball. What we would "like" is to have push from each respective league as the "official" photographer for the league. I've drawn out basics where we will give the league back "X" percentage of total print sales for the season. In this way, both parties (the league and us) stand to benefit.

One of the problems that I forsee is that as the season progresses, parents may not be so interested in buying pictures anymore, but we're expected to stick around and take pics as the league's "official" photographer.

*Have any of you in a similar position experienced this?

*Any specific verbiage I may want to include in what I can only assume will be a written contract w/the league?

*If a parent wants to hire us out to only take pictures of their kid, how do you still fulfill your "official" duties?

[dave13]

Hi,

One thing you may also want to look into would be to do their team and posed individual sports portraits and offer package deals on them ( 1 8x10,2 5x7's sheet of wallets etc)

As far as If a parent wants to hire us out to only take pictures of their kid, how do you still fulfill your "official" duties Go, shoot the game as usual, but pay particular attention to that one kid. The pictures don't neccisarily have to be sports action though. With little league baseball and soccer, its the other things that the kids do that add to it ( playing in the dirt, spinning around etc) I would recomend making a composite picture for these parents in no less than an 11x14 size.



BTW, this is my first post here. I have been photographing for 2 years now and work for a photography studio which also does alot of sports action/event photography. We have 3 baseball leagues,2 soccer, 12 high schools a few middle and elementary schools as well.