Working on a proof of concept: On-hill ski resort photography

If I may take a minute to pick your brains a bit, as I elaborate a business plan...

For the 2014-15 ski season, I'd like to start something that could be interesting. Lucrative? Maybe not, but fun. I'm taking about working at a ski resort, as their on-hill action/family photo service.

I own a chalet next to that unnamed ski area, where I'm a volunteer patroller every other weekend and know on a first-name basis the senior managers of that major ski area, which attracts its fair share of tourists.

This would run on a concession basis -- which would give me exclusivity, not that there are currently anyone freelancing this -- and would allow me to get season passes for the employees.

Employees? Yes: I'd need a sales person at the desk, near the customer service area. Selling, booking, getting in touch with the photographer, getting payments and follow-ups.
I'd also need a photographer, Monday to Friday, to take those photos, as it's teaching photography to high school students that pays the mortgage for me. Would that shooter (with a season' pass, see above) be paid salary, commission, combination of the two? That guy has rent to pay and business will be slow on a -25C day in January or rainy March day. (OTOH, that photographer could be a ski bum, slinging beers at the bar in the evenings and skiing like a mad men every day, photo shoots booked or not...)

Complicating matters is that the federally incorporated company I've set up with my significant other (she does consulting, I do photography) currently operates in Ontario, and that ski area concession would operate in Quebec. So I'd need a second accountant to deal with the provincial taxes of la belle province. Not to mention business registration fees and what not. Those fixed costs add up.
One thing I could do to reduce those would be to operate on weekends only (share the shooting with another photographer) and holidays, two weeks at Christmas/New Years, a couple of others for President's week and two weeks in March for March breaks. But then, I'd need employees working weekends (OK) and for just for a couple of weeks as well, which could be difficult to find...

Now, on the revenue side, I need to figure out if I'd charge a sitting (skiing?) fee, if I'd sell CDs with edited pictures or prints shipped to the client. Quick in and out, printed on site for family pics? Web galleries from which the client could order prints? I have to figure out as well the timeline for the workflow.

Anyway, thanks for reading and feel free to share your opinions on this concept.

Breaking this down to basics and removing the "ski" element from it, what you are really suggesting is setting up an environmental portrait studio in a tourist town.

You will be relying on impulse purchases as the vast majority of your potential clients will only be there for a short time and you will not have the chance to build up a brand image with them in the short time they are there. Unless your marketing is really in-your-face I can imagine that 99%+ of visitors won't even know that your services exist.

Why not build a part time model? Only shoot on the weekends? Have your wife be your front end staff, feel out the market and expand to weekday hours if/when the model would support it. I would imagine the weekends would be the heavy demand times.

Pay your 'sales' staff on commission. $20-25 per sale, fixed. No sales, no income aside from the free pass you provide.

It could work, but as presented there is a lot of risk with very little proven return.

Of course there is the 'Disney' model where you blanket the slopes with 25 photographers each taking 100's of shots per day. Figure you only sell 1% of pictures, but each print is like $25 each.

I was just thinking about the Disneyland model - Photos as you exit every ride. They have the advantage of showing the image on the screen 2 minutes after you exit the ride. You'd be battling much harsher circumstances. But definitely could be lucrative with the right work flow and setup.

I've seen these run by some of my local mountains. They'll deploy the photographer to a popular trail. They deploy an uphill sign that says something along the lines of, "Photographer ahead. Smile!!" The photographer will snap a picture(s) of the skiers as they come down the trail from the sign.

Once the skier(s) reach the photographer they'll stop and be given a number that they can use to identify their photographs in a few hours, usually at skier services. After a set period of time the photographer will breakdown the setup and drop the photos off for quick processing and display and then setup again on another popular trail, wash and repeat.

The customers will showup to the designated area to view the editied version of the photos they were given the number of and are then sold prints at that time. (Some mountains may offer digital versions, I've never gone in to purchase them.)

I helped a buddy do this very thing for two seasons.

It is a blast but in my experience you will make very very little money if any.

I shot on spec and got I think it was 20% commission. The money I made didn't begin to pay for gas to get to the ski resort (I was 12 miles away) let alone the bar tab.

Having said that I did have a lot of fun and did it for two seasons---weekends only

Here's the setup we had:

The boss had a kiosk at the bottom of the hill. He could print or have a disc made.

I would make a couple of runs, shoot and stop at the kiosk and swap out cards.
You need to have wb, exposure and every set ready to go right out of the camera in jpeg. No time to pp they need to be ready right from the camera.
The boss would run them thru light room. and be ready to go.
We had several computer screens out on the walls of the kiosk looping thru the pics.
I'd say the turn around from when I shot to when they were ready to go was 30 min to 45min tops.
Customers could also buy off the net, but this is an impulse deal. f you don't make the sale that day or that hour, you won't make it a day later off the net.

I had a big logo on my jacket and handed out cards with the info.
Taking pics was a very small part of the skill set. You need to be able to approach complete strangers and chat them up and get them to buy a pic---"your child looks awesome, I got some great shots of her cranking turns in the pow."
Stuff like that.
the ability to sale is 90%.

Ski races work too, folks buy pics of the little tykes.
I will say that after 2 seasons the boss closed shop. There really wasn't any money in it.
We were not at a big destination resort.
pm me if you want to talk.

I'd be worried about helmet and googles. When they're on, the picture becomes somewhat impersonal.

Thanks for the input...
OK, here are my thoughts, which I've mulled over since the last reply to this topic.
Some have suggested a shoot a lot (i.e. on spec or intercepting Uncle Bob and his kids as they come down a ski run) and hope to close a sale, either after handing a business card or a ticket. Methinks that if Uncle Bob wants a family picture for a souvenir, he's just going to say "Martha, give your point & shoot to the stranger over here, he'll take our picture!"... As she rolls her eyes, teenager Angie will just snap a shot with her smartphone and post it on Facebook... And teenager Mike, over at the Park, doesn't have the cash to pay for a pro photo of him doing a "rad switch-5 cork, man", because he needs every single penny to buy the same Oakley goggle his idol is paid to wear.

OK, so what's left? Offering to ski with a group of clients, guiding them aroung the mountain to the best locations, shooting as we go along. Quite litterally, a session on snow.

And like any portrait photographer, I need to establish sitting fees, what's included and how much to charge for what is not included.

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I like the weekends only part, BTW.