School Team Photos

Hello sports shooters!

I have been a member here for a bit, but haven't been very active lately due to a growing family. I have been in contact with my local high school and have tossed them the idea of offering team photo sessions. I was thinking of doing a few team shots, and maybe some smaller groups, like seniors, or maybe V/JV/C teams depending on the sport. Then doing individuals as well.

Is this something many of you do? If you do how to you go about pricing this? I was thinking of charging the school a session fee and then giving them a team photo and maybe the individuals of the seniors to use in the yearbook or on signage. I was then thinking of offering a few different packages to the parents.

We are a small school in a small town, so the school will not be able to pay a very large fee for the session time. I will need to make the majority of my money off of sales to parents and players.

My motivation is twofold on this. One i am actually a coach at the school and I would like to have a nice set of team and individual photos and know other coaches would as well. The second idea is that this would get more exposure for my business and maybe get me more senior and family photo work.

So if you wouldn't mind could you give me a general idea of any fees you charge for this type of work, and if you offer up any packages to players/parents. I understand pricing is dependant on a lot of variables.

My plan is to test the waters with it this year and then re evaluate for next year. If it ends up generating more work for me outside of the school photography then it will be worth it.

thanks, in advance.

If you are employed by the school(?) i can imagine someone would ask you to shoot for free, charge the parents and hand over a percentage of sales to "boost the school funds". Let us know how you get on.

At our high school, the yearbook photos are taken by the yearbook/journalism students

bildeb0rg wrote in post #18729935
If you are employed by the school(?) i can imagine someone would ask you to shoot for free, charge the parents and hand over a percentage of sales to "boost the school funds". Let us know how you get on.

I am not a full time school employee and am only a contract employee during the coaching season. I have talked to the athletic director and the principle and they were both excited about the idea. I am not opposed to the idea of donating a percentage of profits back to the school, actually I think it is a very good idea.

duckster wrote in post #18730194
At our high school, the yearbook photos are taken by the yearbook/journalism students

We are a small school and the yearbook staff does take photos for the yearbook.

Maybe I am way off base here and this isn't a service that is generally offered any longer. I can remember many years ago when I was playing HS sports there was a photographer that came in and took official team photos and also individual photos. My parents could then order different packages.

I guess I am just trying to get an idea of how other photographers that are offering this service are monetizing it? Is the norm to do the shoot for free and then plan to make your money off of image sales?

I don't think there is a norm as such, just an opportunity to provide a service and male some money.
If you do it during work hours i can't see them paying you extra and outside of that i can't see you getting any more than your coaching rate.
As a top tip, after you set up a group, bring in the parents to shoot with their phones, then change the group to get a different angle that only you have.
I lined up a group of swimmers on the starting blocks to shoot across them and the parents shots either missed focus on their kid or had not enough depth of field to cover everyone. I then got got the kids to bomb the pool which gave me a unique shot that sold to all the parents.
Let us know how you get on...

I don’t do this kind of work but would find out what the parents pay for class pictures.

dphillips81 wrote in post #18730312
Maybe I am way off base here and this isn't a service that is generally offered any longer.

You're not off base. I do sports action photos under contract to a yearbook company. Their profit comes from the staged photos of the students, band, sports T&I, etc. They don't make any money off what I do, but the quality me and the other contracted sports photographers provide is one of the things that sets this local company apart from the competition. I have no idea what they charge though as my kids are out of school.