Motorsports, prints, price and rights - tips for selling too

Hey Vizzard great photos.

Funny I always thought you were a guy but I noiced the name in the bottom corner of your photos, Helge. I've never meet a female interested in drag racing before, I can't get my wife to go even if I bribe her with gifts of flowers and chocolate.

You have some pretty good aeroplane shots and some of Tommy which are pretty good.

LOL! Well, last time I checked, I _still_ was a guy "Helge" is a boy-name in Norway, while "Helga" (notice last char) is a girls-name here. I've met several Americans thinking Helge is a girls-name though. Is "Helge" a girls name over there?

So you haven't met a girl interested in dragracing? I certainly do I'm sponsoring a team with one. The driver is one of my best friends.. an 18 year old cute girl This girl won an event (bracketing-class though) just after getting her dragracing-license last season, and only three days after getting her normal drivers-license (which you don't get until 18 in Norway). I can imagine some embaressed boys running aginst her in that event =D Anyway, this year they got a new engine, and lots of sponsors. They got ambitions of finishing top-5 in the SuperStreet national cup this year (and yeah, that's in the class named "Bad Boys", and not a female cup ) Real nice to have a female friend you can talk horsepower with =D Not many of those

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Woops I asked my wife but my Norwegian sucks so I guess she thought I said Helga not Helge, she's kicking my butt over my Norwegian and since we are moving to Norway next year I had better start practicing.

To defend yourself against your wife, just slam this fact in the table next time she **** about your Norwegian: In Norway you start English-education at the age of 8-9 or so, and you're thought it at school at _LEAST_ until you're 18, so you will have no problem speaking English to most people here. Your Norwegian will anyway get good quite fast after you've moved here. But yeah, for a job it will probably be quite nice if you speak it already when moving here.

I'll just give her a hard time now whenever she say's english isn't my first language and uses it as an excuse. Women as sneaky like that give them and inch and they take the how mile (scandinavian mile that is).

You should watch some NHRA on tele, I've seen many females racing at the top level. Angelle Savoir (sp?) is one of the top drag bike racers, multiple world champion in her class I think.

Another option...

Printing, shipping, billing... Personally, I'd rather be doing other things!
Have you seen the sites where you can post images & someone can review them & pick ones to print? You set the price, they take care of everything & you get paid! Even T-shirts, coffee cups, calendars, etc are options which will increase sales. That's for me! Maybe it's for you, too. Take a look at Mypics.com & Fotopic.net to see what I mean.
[Some car pics: http://frank-cizek.fotopic.net/c154​195.html]

Only hitch I can see is that you're in Norway, so you might a vendor that's somewhat local to reduce shipping charges, but I'm sure that some exist.

Ritz camera has a 4X6 album for $3 that holds 26 pics & will fit in your pocket, & it's great for showing the type of pics you take & generating interest in visiting the site. Also, they have a great deal in the Walgreen's drugstore here where you can get 50 4X6s for $10, so I made color business cards sized 2X4 & can get 150 cards for a price much under normal printing costs. An advantage is that the card can be changed whenever I want to show something different. Disadvantage is that you have to cut them out.

I'd post one here but Fotopic "upload" is down for maintainance. Let me know if you'd like to see one in a few days.

Good luck!

One of the most famous drag racers in history was a woman, Shirley Muldowney.

Angelle is a 3 time record setting bike champion. Karen Stoffer is another bike rider that is winning. There is at least 1 woman competing in the top fuel dragster class right now and many, more in the sportsman classes. John Force's daughter is doing real well in alcohol dragsters. I don't know about elsewhere, but women are a big part of drag racing in the US and I love it.

As for the photography, for your weekly local races, I don't expect you'd have much of a problem. For special meets put on by a promoter, I would get permission from them, they will usually want some pics in return.

I work for one promoted event now (6 races) and have had another photog that showed up, lied to get access to the starting line, then put pics up online, with the event name and everything as if he was "official". On top of that he totally copied the website of a fairly well known drag race photographer. The promoters were very upset and will not give him access again. I know I lost some sales after I put a lot of time and effort into my website and advertising. It's not much different than going to a wedding, taking pics, handing out cards then posting them for sale as if you were the official photog of the wedding. I only mention this because you should make sure you aren't stepping on toes at an event such as this. A small locally promoted drag racing event only has a certain amount of business to go around.

As you get to bigger events, you will find it much more difficult to get access. As Daniel said, NHRA events are the most strict of all of them.

BTW, I don't sell pics at the event, I looked into it but my events just aren't big enough for it, plus I'd rather concentrate on my photography and not worry about getting files uploaded and printed. I post them online on my site and use paypal for payments or they can mail me a check. Add enough shipping & handling to cover shipping, envelopes and labels and you're set. You can see it here: www.gulfimagesphoto.co​m/txshootout

For my cards, I just made a little collage in 4x6 and had a bunch printed at Walmart. They even made me a cheaper deal for buying a quantity. My wife goes through the pits and hands them out.

Cheers,
Bobby

Thanks for all the input in this thread. It have been highly appreciated. I've tried to contact the people responsible for the event both by phone and email, but haven't succeeded in reaching them yet. Guess I'll just have to keep on

vvizard wrote:
I've tried to contact the people responsible for the event both by phone and email, but haven't succeeded in reaching them yet. Guess I'll just have to keep on

This is the hardest part! I'm not sure if they dont WANT to answer of the day-to-day operations make it really difficult. You may just end up showing up at an event just to talk to them.

-Pete

vvizard wrote:
I've tried to contact the people responsible for the event both by phone and email, but haven't succeeded in reaching them yet. Guess I'll just have to keep on

Ask the racers you know to put in a word for you, it will help.