Question about shooting high school & league sports

[Dace]

Hello, I am brand new to this forum, although I have been reading through here for about two weeks. You all are a great bunch with so much to offer!

I am an amateur photographer, no training, just learning as I go. I really fell in love with photography when I started taking shots of my daughter's water polo team and got hooked. I have spent the last year shooting anything and everything...mostly my kids sports. I just LOVE a great action shot! I am far from pro, but with my Canon EOS I am able to get better shots than most of the other parents and since I love shooting, I really want to be able to share the images that I capture.

Recognizing that I know next to nothing, I have been reading a lot in an effort to learn as much as I can about photography.

I have been toying with the idea of putting together a website to make the images available for the other kids' families to purchase....I am leaning towards smugmug after all that I have read here.

Another thing I am interested in pursuing is to set up an agreement with my daughter's high school. I am wondering if you all may have some input for me. My first thought I gain permission to shoot at the assorted sporting events...post them on my web site for the families to purchase and in exchange for the school's blessing, I would give them access to a limited number of images for the year book and or the school website. I am thinking 5 images per sport.

Any input, advice, warnings? All would be greatly appreciated.

[Mike R]

Make sure you have a model release signed by the legal guardian for each kid you photograph. It is possible that the school has them on file for each child who participates in a sport. If they say that they have them, ask to see them. If you need to get them, remember that there is a difference between a Parent and a Legal Guardian. It's sad but just because someone is a parent, does not mean the are the legal guardian w/custody. I am taking photos of my sons HS track team and will be providing the coach with low res images to use in a slide show at the annual banquet. If he does not produce signed releases, I will give him releases to send home with the kids to have signed. My feeling is that all parents would want shots of their kids,even if only shown at the banquet. BUT you never know. The dilemma I have is that if the images also have kids from other towns in them, How I should handle it. I may just crop them out.
School sports photography can lead to other work, I already have some Senior Portraits scheduled because of sport shots that I gave to parents (I considered the few shots as an "advertising" expense, which paid off.)
Best of Luck

[Tandem]

Have a talk with the athletic director and tell him/her what you plan on doing. Around here a release is not required for high school sports but may be for club sports depending on the league. Letting the schools use your photos for their website or yearbook is a great idea. I let the schools copy the photos from my website to theirs.

I started off with an agreement with one athletic director to shoot as many sports at all levels at his school. He liked my work so much he asked for some of my business cards so he could pass them out and recommend me at a local athletic director's meeting. Now I am welcome to shoot at 19 of 20 of the larger schools in the area. The one school were I was turned down has a yearbook staff that sells photos at twice my price and I would be in competition with them so I understand their reluctance to let me shoot there.

Smugmug is a great site to host your photos. Also check out highschoolsports.net and see if the schools in your area use the site for their game schedules. If they do you can post your photos for each game that is on the schedule. If the parents/fans like your photos on highschoolsports.net a click on the buy button will send them to your personal site where you sell the prints. I photograph all the teams in a game/tournament and separate the photos and post them on the respective team's highschoolsports.net page. I get a lot of out-of-town sales that way.

[CanonCam]

If you are shooting in a public venue such as a high school sports event, you should be ok without a release. Worst case scenario is that the parent is upset and tells you to take their kid off your website and you oblige them by taking the kid off the website. Not much more can be done as far as I know. If you had to have releases for public events there would be no pictures in the newspaper's sports section. (or any other section)

Go shoot them and have fun!

[Dace]

Mike R, Tandem & CanonCam....Thank you all for your replies. I appreciate the input. :D

I will look into the high school sports schedule website, that is a great tip! Also, because the school likes to put photos on the web they require a media release signed by all participants, is that enough or do I need a model release as well? It does get tricky when you start involving other teams in the shots, but I think it would be easy enough to call the opposing teams coaches to make sure they have the proper releases.

Also...do I need to keep a copy of all of those releases on file?

CanonCam, I think that high school sports is not considered public as they are frequently held on school property which I would assume is private. ...whereas most little league games are help on public property. I could be completely wrong here though!

[CanonCam]

No, I could very well be wrong too. But it is my understanding that high school sports being open to the public to attend makes them public domain. Aside from that, most public schools are, in fact, public property. I don't know if private schools apply. I still maintain that even if it is private property, how do they legally print pictures in the newspaper?

My brother shoots for one of the local NBC affiliates and tells me that anytime you are out in public you do so with the understanding that your picture might be taken. Now what is done with that picture could be another issue, I don't know. But he takes pictures of people all the time that end up on the 6 O'clock news and never gets a model release.

I'm interested to see what others understandings are on these issues as well. IndyJeff gave some great advice in this area on some other threads I read as well. I'd post the links, but I don't know where they are now.

[Gatorboy]

Make sure you have a model release signed by the legal guardian for each kid you photograph.

Posting images on a website for sale to parents is not considered commercial use.

No release is needed.

[rcavanaughjr]

Posting images on a website for sale to parents is not considered commercial use.

No release is needed.


Just curious.......Are the key words in the above response "for sale to parents"?

[Gatorboy]

Just curious.......Are the key words in the above response "for sale to parents"?

If you are selling the images to Coke, Nike, etc. for use in ads, etc. then you DO need a model release. But not for sale for personal or editorial use.

[Mike R]

Just when I thought I understood the copyright issues, it gets more confusing. I guess that is why there are copyright attorneys.

[symes]

Posting images on a website for sale to parents is not considered commercial use.

No release is needed.

That isn't technically true but you will get away with it most of the time...Some parents will demand you take it down...

Cheers,

Matt

[Dace]

Thanks again for all of the input. The release thing does get a little slippery here, but I think all in all it will be ok. :)

[Mayfly]

It's pretty simple really. What we did was approached the athletic boosters at one of their meetings and presented them with the idea. As good faith we even agreed to donate a portion of the profits back to the athletic boosters. Trust me they are always looking for free money. Now we shoot a couple local schools and are always in need of photographers to help out as it can get very busy. We now get emails constantly from parents asking to take pictures of their kid. It's a good business model and it pays the bills when we don't have a wedding or portrait or whatever to do. So far privacy problems have not been an issue and if it is we are more than happy to accomodate.........it's no big deal really.

[Dace]

Thanks Jason,
I have already decided to donate a percentage to the school sports department. I am thinking 10-15% what do you think? Is that sufficient?

[Gatorboy]

That isn't technically true but you will get away with it most of the time...Some parents will demand you take it down...


Just because some parents (none have asked me in the 3 years I've been shooting) ask you to take images off your website doesn't mean you NEED a model release.

[Mayfly]

Thanks Jason,
I have already decided to donate a percentage to the school sports department. I am thinking 10-15% what do you think? Is that sufficient?

That sounds fine, we actually do 20% for one of our schools. Even though it is high it doesn't hurt us too bad since it is a big school. Plus it can turn into other things like senior portraits which is decent money. They even gave us a full page add in their yearbook for this year which is a huge marketing tool for the community..............and it was 100% free.

[symes]

Just because some parents (none have asked me in the 3 years I've been shooting) ask you to take images off your website doesn't mean you NEED a model release.


Gatorboy, technically you do need a release to sell those images to anyone...you can get away with not doing that because largely the only people buying the images want them...but to say that you don't need a release if you are selling to parents is incorrect information, no matter the practice people need to be aware.

Cheers,

[gparvan]

Gatorboy, technically you do need a release to sell those images to anyone...you can get away with not doing that because largely the only people buying the images want them...but to say that you don't need a release if you are selling to parents is incorrect information, no matter the practice people need to be aware.

Cheers,

Hmmm, a debate over the legal issue of when a Model Release is needed. Do we need to consider state law? Perhaps a reference to an authoritative source is needs to be sighted?