On-site Printing for Football Tournament

I have been asked to photograph a bantam league football tournament next saturday and they would like to have prints available for sale. I think I have the equipment I need but I'm not sure how to accomplish the viewing and printing.

I have 2 dye sub printers and 3 laptops. My plan is to use 2 laptops for viewing and one for downloading cards and printing. I will have 2 photographers shooting the 4 games, one game at a time. They will periodically bring cards to the printing booth and they will be downloaded.

My question is...how do I accomplish the printing? I need to have the photos available for viewing on 2 computers and be able to identify prints for purchase and print the image. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I think this has been discussed many times before, but have you considered using something like Photo Parata or 5 minute photo? I am partial to Photo Parata but that's just me... any program like this will allow the parents to find the prints and put them in a cart for you to print. With just a week to prepare, it can be done, but will be tough.

I have never tried an event without a program of this type, so other than just using folders and a paper order form, I have no other suggestions for this.

I will say make sure you are keeping the printers away from dust and dirt as much as possible. Are you setting up in a trailer or a building?

How big of a tourney? Like Lace mentioned this has been talked about at great length. do a search and you will see some threads.
Two laptops for viewing is pretty slim to accommodate two teams getting done at the same time. Perhaps printing some small thumbnails 8x10s for people to look at might work.
A week is a bit tight and there is a bit of a curve with the software and operation if you have never done this before.
All it takes is $$$.

I think I am going with on-line orders rather than printing on site for this tournament. I don't expect to get much out of it, but it will give me a chance to see what the turn out will be like. The tournament will be 8 teams of bantam football, so I don't expect a huge crowd or big sales.

I printed a bunch of 4x6 cards to hand out to people at the games and have asked the league president to email all of the parents with a link to the photos for on line orders.

You get 1/10th the sales online vs an onsite presence. You want as many viewstations as possible. That said, your sales for the football tourney probably won't be that good. Key for onsite sales is that you MUST make the parents walk by the viewstations. Football tourneys have too many exits, and you'll only get 1/10th the people walking by.

John

Get Zenfolio and upload photos to Zenfolio as soon as possible in a folder that makes the photos easy to find. With 2-3 viewing stations people can view the photos and order prints or download and you save lots of time.

NetJohn wrote in post #16365763
You get 1/10th the sales online vs an onsite presence. You want as many viewstations as possible. That said, your sales for the football tourney probably won't be that good. Key for onsite sales is that you MUST make the parents walk by the viewstations. Football tourneys have too many exits, and you'll only get 1/10th the people walking by.

John

I agree, I work for an events company sometimes who do this for a living, they always try to get near to the car park at the exit that most will have to pass, at times this is the biggest challenge and sometime you are lucky if it is a two day tournament so you can move the second day if it is not working. The clubs will normally oblige as you normally give a % of sales to the host club.