Getting paid

So my friend just recently asked me to shoot his pro soccer game (he's on the team as his dads the owner), and after showing him the pictures he told me they're great and basically they want me to shoot at almost all of their games. I'm up for it, but I want to get paid if I'm going to have to sort through 500+ photos the day after the game.

So I'm curious as to what I should charge them for every game? I don't feel like wasting my time every game and day after for free as I was told I did a better job than the previous photographer by a lot.

Here's the link to the pictures and it was my first real game I was able to shoot. Mind you, quality is sub par in my standards just because I was using a 5Dc and tracking with a 5Dc is not easy. I have a 1DIII now so I should be much more prepared for the next game I just need to be paid if I'm going to be shooting another game.

http://jacobskoglund.z​enfolio.com/p428866836

Depends on what you are giving the team and if they have the rights to sell or use the images commercially.

Cozmocha wrote in post #14661920
Depends on what you are giving the team and if they have the rights to sell or use the images commercially.

I just e-mailed the owner regarding being payed, or if they want to hire me, so if in fact we make a contract, what should I include then?

The images would be used on the site, I would assume the rights would still be mine unless say they wanted to make a special campaign I would assume that we would have to have a contract giving me a certain % of whats made but it isn't that complicated yet.

As for the right to sell I guess I would have to ask him, but it's more so just to display the photos I would assume?

Can I suggest that starting a negotiation without a starting position will inevitably lead to confusion. I suggest that you make an offer, it doesn't matter much what the offer is as it will probably only be a starting point.

It might be reasonable to look at it this way. Its two days work, one to shoot and one for pp. If I remember, you are 16 or 17 and at school, its is difficult for school age people to command top dollar.....lets say for the first year (for each game or training session or event)...$600.00 for the two days work and you licence the use of the images to them. There is no need to mention copyright, it will only confuse the issue. They are getting a quality product on a reliable basis, they can use the images at will....how does this sound. Good luck, its great to see someone getting a break.

RAW RAW RAW wrote in post #14662086
Can I suggest that starting a negotiation without a starting position will inevitably lead to confusion. I suggest that you make an offer, it doesn't matter much what the offer is as it will probably only be a starting point.

It might be reasonable to look at it this way. Its two days work, one to shoot and one for pp. If I remember, you are 16 or 17 and at school, its is difficult for school age people to command top dollar.....lets say for the first year (for each game or training session or event)...$600.00 for the two days work and you licence the use of the images to them. There is no need to mention copyright, it will only confuse the issue. They are getting a quality product on a reliable basis, they can use the images at will....how does this sound. Good luck, its great to see someone getting a break.

thanks a lot for the advice! That really does help! Yes, I'm 17 (going to be a senior), and you are right about commanding top dollar. To be quite honest though I don't need top dollar either, $600 for one game is more than what I make for like 5 or so weeks at where I work.

I don't really need the copyright either as long as I'm getting paid and he said that he would gladly link all my photos back to my website and give me credit as well as exposure. I guess $600 is fair though, now that I think about it it takes me close to 9-10 hours to sort through all 500+ photos as well as edit them. I'm hopin he will hire me though as it would be great experience for me and I could meet new people and possibly weasel my way into getting even better jobs.

You did do a nice job with those photos. You are starting from a great place and after a few more games you will be even better.

Do you have any idea what they paid the last guy? I don't know anything about the league or the team but $600 a game will likely be high, or very high to them. Though it would be great if you could get it. My experience with "team owners" like this is that they have pretty close to zero budgeted for photography and that they will try to trade you with mentions in the program, links on their web site, announcements on the PA and they will let you sell any photos you can from your web site.

If that's the case you will have to decide if that's how you want to break into sports photography. Just know that you will not sell many photos to players this age and their parents are, for the most part, done buying photos of these "kids".

One more thing, you need to streamline your workflow so that it does not take you that long to get through a game shoot. You should be able to do it in one or two hours at the most with a good tool like Lightroom. Your exposures should be pretty consistent so your adjustments are able to be copied across many photos and you should crop to the original aspect ratio or to 4x6 aspect ratio.

Good luck with this!

you mentioned that this is a professional soccer game, correct?

How many fans does the team average? How much do those fans pay per ticket? That will give you an idea of the revenue they are bringing in. If they are a professional team but can't get fans in the stands (either the bleachers in the linked shots were closed, or there wasn't a single fan in attendance), then your demands for money will fall on deaf ears

bpalermini wrote in post #14662245
You did do a nice job with those photos. You are starting from a great place and after a few more games you will be even better.

Do you have any idea what they paid the last guy? I don't know anything about the league or the team but $600 a game will likely be high, or very high to them. Though it would be great if you could get it. My experience with "team owners" like this is that they have pretty close to zero budgeted for photography and that they will try to trade you with mentions in the program, links on their web site, announcements on the PA and they will let you sell any photos you can from your web site.

If that's the case you will have to decide if that's how you want to break into sports photography. Just know that you will not sell many photos to players this age and their parents are, for the most part, done buying photos of these "kids".

One more thing, you need to streamline your workflow so that it does not take you that long to get through a game shoot. You should be able to do it in one or two hours at the most with a good tool like Lightroom. Your exposures should be pretty consistent so your adjustments are able to be copied across many photos and you should crop to the original aspect ratio or to 4x6 aspect ratio.

Good luck with this!

Thanks! I guess I got a bit excited when I saw $600 but in reality because it's pro, but not tier 1 or anything of the sort (tier 4), I had in mind originally about $150-$200.

I would assume my workflow would have been a lot quicker be it a daytime game with the sun not setting but because the sun set the exposures all were pretty different, the shadows were different and there was just no way I was going to be able to batch edit everything without getting totally mixed results.

That being said I could definitely shorten my workflow by batch editing a few pictures at a time, but just checking over all the pictures and sorting through good and bad, and then worthy of the website photos vs. the good photos. That takes me probably an hour to two hours depending on how fast I'm feeling

I definitely don't think I'm going to be selling the photos unless fans decide to buy them, but that's a maybe, I don't know if I really even want to to be honest though. Well I hope I can be hired, I emailed the guy so it's only luck really.

JacobPhoto wrote in post #14662384
you mentioned that this is a professional soccer game, correct?

How many fans does the team average? How much do those fans pay per ticket? That will give you an idea of the revenue they are bringing in. If they are a professional team but can't get fans in the stands (either the bleachers in the linked shots were closed, or there wasn't a single fan in attendance), then your demands for money will fall on deaf ears

Yeah, it's a Tier 4 MLS team. Last game they had about 1,000 people and the tickets were $5, they also played NY Red Bulls so normally game attendance isn't that high. I'm sure I will not be getting $600/game but if anything hopefully the owner can put in a good word about me to some other teams and maybe they'll hire me for a bit more money.

Had to do a double take at the title of this thread....

Thought it said "Getting Laid".

Jacob, I suspect that the team owner might have some personal money, but probably not much of that is invested in the team. Therefore, especially since you're a high schooler, he might not be thinking of paying much. You might want to figure out what would be a good hourly rate for your work (compared to what else you would be doing this summer) and translate that into a per game fee for shooting. He certainly can't expect you to work for free, and unless you have a track record and sports portfolio, you can't expect top dollar for your work. Meet somewhere in the middle where you don't feel like you're getting ripped off, get a contract to shoot (what you will provide and what he will pay), and go for it. It will be good experience.

laxlife1234 wrote in post #14661821
So my friend just recently asked me to shoot his pro soccer game (he's on the team as his dads the owner), and after showing him the pictures he told me they're great and basically they want me to shoot at almost all of their games. I'm up for it, but I want to get paid if I'm going to have to sort through 500+ photos the day after the game.

So I'm curious as to what I should charge them for every game? I don't feel like wasting my time every game and day after for free as I was told I did a better job than the previous photographer by a lot.

Here's the link to the pictures and it was my first real game I was able to shoot. Mind you, quality is sub par in my standards just because I was using a 5Dc and tracking with a 5Dc is not easy. I have a 1DIII now so I should be much more prepared for the next game I just need to be paid if I'm going to be shooting another game.

http://jacobskoglund.z​enfolio.com/p428866836

Friend. Dad owner. Do you really think they care about cost? Charge $1K and be done with it.

whuband wrote in post #14663157
Jacob, I suspect that the team owner might have some personal money, but probably not much of that is invested in the team. Therefore, especially since you're a high schooler, he might not be thinking of paying much. You might want to figure out what would be a good hourly rate for your work (compared to what else you would be doing this summer) and translate that into a per game fee for shooting. He certainly can't expect you to work for free, and unless you have a track record and sports portfolio, you can't expect top dollar for your work. Meet somewhere in the middle where you don't feel like you're getting ripped off, get a contract to shoot (what you will provide and what he will pay), and go for it. It will be good experience.

I don't know if he would be intereted in spending his own money to pay for my photography, but if he does that's if he decides to. I still have yet to discuss it with him so I'm not even sure if he would be OK with hiring me to pay me but if he is I think we can set-up something that's fair to both of us.

S.Horton wrote in post #14663299
Friend. Dad owner. Do you really think they care about cost? Charge $1K and be done with it.

But see I'm trying to do things professionally. I want to be fair in what I do for both him and I. In my opinion, a client is a client, regardless of who they are.

Its your call but please don't work for peanuts. A reasonable person will pay a reasonable fee. (An unreasonable person, one who won't pay, is not worth dealing with) I was thinking that $300/day for a competent (if young) photographer was reasonable. Don't forget the cost of hire of your gear. You don't hire /get access to $1,000s worth of specialized photographic and editing gear for free either.

Working for credit of your work is BS, you should get that anyway/as well.

Good luck, let us know how you go.

All this talk about pricing is great, but you have one more job on your hands. You have to convince them that the photos are worth your wage, whatever it is. If you can do that, negotiating a price becomes a bit easier for you.

As a sidenote, try to stop taking photos of people's backs and be more selective on your cull. Your time spent in post will shrink by a lot.

RAW RAW RAW wrote in post #14663513
Its your call but please don't work for peanuts. A reasonable person will pay a reasonable fee. (An unreasonable person, one who won't pay, is not worth dealing with) I was thinking that $300/day for a competent (if young) photographer was reasonable. Don't forget the cost of hire of your gear. You don't hire /get access to $1,000s worth of specialized photographic and editing gear for free either.

Working for credit of your work is BS, you should get that anyway/as well.

Good luck, let us know how you go.

I'm hoping the owner willl be reasonable. I mean I literally rented gear for the last game just because I didn't have the proper gear (OUT OF MY OWN POCKET), so I'm hoping he will see the light and offer me a job or at least we can work something out so this way it covers what I paid for the rented gear.

If he asks what I think is a reasonable rate or what I was thinking I'll tell him $300, if he doesn't like it I'll say I can do a little better to work with his budget?

ajaffe wrote in post #14663765
All this talk about pricing is great, but you have one more job on your hands. You have to convince them that the photos are worth your wage, whatever it is. If you can do that, negotiating a price becomes a bit easier for you.

As a sidenote, try to stop taking photos of people's backs and be more selective on your cull. Your time spent in post will shrink by a lot.

I already did as they liked the pictures or so I was told. They even said that I was much better than the last photography service they had (xxxxx photography... sorry if they're on here but they're horrid).

The AF on the 5D didn't really let me take good shots as the people tended to move too fast for me to capture them. I have a 1D3 now though so I'll be able to use faster AF.