Low-End Sports Photography

My 14-year-old wants to try her hand at shooting basketball for pay. Her friends' AAU and travel teams, to start. Just live action shots, no team photos and that kind of thing. She gets great shots (shooting high school team), but certainly nowhere near pro level. She (I) has necessary gear to shoot in sometimes underlit gyms.

I think this is a pretty bad idea from a business standpoint, but I try to be supportive, and I think it's good for kids to try something even if they fail, so I have no issue with her doing it.

So my advice will be: Get permission from coach and venue to shoot games; Use our existing smugmug account to sell photos (priced low); don't try to compete with pros shooting same games, though per her friends that never happens.

Thoughts? Is there a better way to do this? Pricing suggestions on a per photo basis?

Thank you.

mpix345 wrote in post #18996483
My 14-year-old .... but I try to be supportive, and I think it's good for kids to try something even if they fail, so I have no issue with her doing it.

If she is 14 try to let her try as many things as possible and not make it about the money. If she likes it, the money will come later. Maybe try and get a meeting with a local sports photographer and see if he needs an assistant so she can see the hard work that goes in to doing it professionally.

Basically IMO, at 14, photography experience and enjoying it should be the main focus. Sure some income would be nice but trust me she has the rest of her life to make money.

I agree with benji25, encourage her to pursue her passion and develop her skills. I would try to temper her expectations on sales until she produces images and delivers them in a professional like manner.

Some kids have the entrepreneurial bug (or gene?), and more power to them ! Maybe for her, it's more of the business aspect or maybe it's more the photography aspect, but I applaud you for supporting her in whatever she does.

tcphoto1 wrote in post #18996619
I agree with benji25, encourage her to pursue her passion and develop her skills. I would try to temper her expectations on sales until she produces images and delivers them in a professional like manner.

From my perspective it's about the process and not the dollars. I've told her some of the horror stories I've read on here about how hard it is to make a buck in this field. Hopefully some of that has sunk in. She's gotten tons of positive feedback from kids, parents and school administrators regarding the photos she's shared for free, but that obviously doesn't mean that people will pay anything for prints or files. Good lessons to be learned, I think.

Thanks. I think she has both bugs at the moment. And she's also thinking about what will look good on a college application.

I'd say there is zero chance that photography becomes a career choice for her. Worst case I view this as a pretty fun activity that will provide some good experience/learnings. Anything beyond that would be a bonus.

Give her her own gallery within your smugmug account, assuming you have one of the top two tiers where you make money, and have her try her hand at this and share the gallery on facebook after each game. The only issue is that unless you have the top tier smugmug, you can only have one price sheet, and thus are locked in on all galleries at those markups. With the top tier, you can assign price sheets to different galleries.

While I agree with the idea that she should shoot and learn from the the process, I think you are setting her up for failure by fostering the idea that she's actually going to sell much if anything. I realize sales are less of a goal than the day of creating, but she's going to want to be successful in the entirety of the project. Even great work peddled to that market doesn't sell much so my comments aren't assuming failure based on her work, but rather the marketplace. I'm just worried that if her artistic endeavors are successful, but sales don't follow she'll internalize the failure.

I would counter with the fact that if she takes alot of good photos and posts them for maybe $1 or so each for a full rez download, she will eventually see which photos garner the most attention. Smugmug provides a ton of stats of what pictures are looked at, which are sold, etc.

When I do band or school sports, I will shoot every kid and then post them. I immediately can see which parents are interested in photos of their kids based on sales and view stats, and the next time out, I concentrate my efforts on those kids. This has worked pretty well.

So as long as she has the basics down and can take pretty good pictures, posting them and selling them can provide very useful info, and help concentrate the time spent on certain kids. Also, she can see which types of shots seem to draw the most interest.

Not directly applicable to photography, but very relevant to this thread I would say, I think of the story of Byron Allen, a guy that many either have no clue who of, or maybe have a vague recollection of. Though coming from fairly humble beginnings, he had the "bug" (for entertainment and, subsequently, business-building) from the start, and didn't know the meaning of the word "no". Coincidentally, he had his first big break at the age of 14.

I heard him on a podcast recently (WTF with Marc Maron) - I found his story to be very inspiring. I remember him when he was a young and kind of goofy comic on a show way back called Real People, and hadn't heard of him since. I had no idea that today he's a media mogul, a business genius and humanitarian.

https://en.wikipedia.o​rg/wiki/Byron_Allen

http://www.wtfpod.com …/episode-1056-byron-allen

gonzogolf wrote in post #18996890
..... I think you are setting her up for failure by fostering the idea that she's actually going to sell much if anything. I realize sales are less of a goal than the day of creating, but she's going to want to be successful in the entirety of the project. Even great work peddled to that market doesn't sell much so my comments aren't assuming failure based on her work, but rather the marketplace. I'm just worried that if her artistic endeavors are successful, but sales don't follow she'll internalize the failure.

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I understand what you are saying, but think that it might not go down the way you think.

Perhaps she would be thrilled if she sold 2 or 3 images, for two or three dollars a piece. . Maybe to her that would be real success - "someone wanted my photos enough to pay something for them - woo hoooooo!!!!!"

I mean, just look at the thousands upon thousands of adult photographers who spend hours and hours submitting their images to microstock agencies, and have done so for several years, and are thrilled when one of their images is downloaded by a client and they get their $0.25 commission. . I have been on the microstock forums, and many people are very happy when, after dozens and dozens of hours of hard work, they make 25 or 50 cents. . They actually start a thread to celebrate the "event", that's how happy they are about their 25 cent sale.

Many adults feel this sense of success and accomplishment when they work hard at photography for a long time, and after a few years, accumulate a total of 5 or 10 bucks in sales. . It confirms that what they worked on was good enough that someone else wanted to use it, and that brings joy and builds confidence. . Why would you think that things would be any different with a 14 year old junior high kid?


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Tom Reichner wrote in post #18997890
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I understand what you are saying, but think that it might not go down the way you think.

Perhaps she would be thrilled if she sold 2 or 3 images, for two or three dollars a piece. . Maybe to her that would be real success - "someone wanted my photos enough to pay something for them - woo hoooooo!!!!!"

I mean, just look at the thousands upon thousands of adult photographers who spend hours and hours submitting their images to microstock agencies, and have done so for several years, and are thrilled when one of their images is downloaded by a client and they get their $0.25 commission. . I have been on the microstock forums, and many people are very happy when, after dozens and dozens of hours of hard work, they make 25 or 50 cents. . They actually start a thread to celebrate the "event", that's how happy they are about their 25 cent sale.

Many adults feel this sense of success and accomplishment when they work hard at photography for a long time, and after a few years, accumulate a total of 5 or 10 bucks in sales. . It confirms that what they worked on was good enough that someone else wanted to use it, and that brings joy and builds confidence. . Why would you think that things would be any different with a 14 year old junior high kid?

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I think adults have the ability to separate he quality of the work from sales, or at least the self delusion to blame the failure on something other than their own ability. I based my opinion on the the numerous posts here where guys shot local teams, more often than not their kids team. Everyone tells them how great the work is when it's on a gallery for free, Moving to the next step and converting those images to sales is almost always a failure. So I would turn that question back to you, why would it be different for her?

gonzogolf wrote in post #18998135
I think adults have the ability to separate he quality of the work from sales, or at least the self delusion to blame the failure on something other than their own ability. I based my opinion on the the numerous posts here where guys shot local teams, more often than not their kids team. Everyone tells them how great the work is when it's on a gallery for free, Moving to the next step and converting those images to sales is almost always a failure. So I would turn that question back to you, why would it be different for her?

I talked about this very thing in post #5 above. And I don't think it will be much different for her. At $1/pic some of her friends parents will buy a photo or two. Because they like the photos, but mostly because it's a friend of their kid who they know and want to support. But again, I don't think the "failure" to sell more than a few photos is a bad thing at all. It would be for a pro who is trying to pay bills by selling photos, but for a teenager who has mostly excelled at everything gaining some understanding that things can be tough is a good thing imo.

Some people seem to think that failure could be crushing, or something. I guess that's possible, but not very likely. If she strives for big things in life and takes chances (which I hope she does) she will likely fail more than a few times. Failing at 14 at something serious but not critical should make those bigger issues in life a bit easier to deal with. At least that's my theory.

Why shouldn't she try to compete against the pros? If she's getting credentialed and is working her tail off to get the shots, and IF she gets them, she deserves to earn whatever the market bears. If her work is not up to par she should get less or even nothing. That's the best learning moment anyone could ask for IMHO. Age should have nothing to do with it. Ability, quality of work should. Hate to see young folks get less IF it's the same quality. And if she's only OK but enjoys it, that's good too. I just looked at basketball shots from my '76 high school yearbook and the work of those students still holds up today.

gonzogolf wrote in post #18998135
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So I would turn that question back to you, why would it be different for her?
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Because I think the guys you are speaking of probably had unreasonable expectations about how many sales they would make; hence they felt that they failed when they only sold a few downloads for a few dollars a piece.

I think that most any 14 year old who loves photography would be thrilled if, over the course of 6 or 8 months, they actually sold 3 or 4 photos for 2 dollars per download. . If a kid that age makes 5 or 10 bucks doing what they love to do as a hobby, that would probably feel like a big, exciting success to them, not a failure.


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