How do you guys do it ?

Hello All,

I was recently covering Rowing Event which took place in our boot club. While taking pictures I found lot of participant asking me to take their snaps and wanted me to print them as well. I was very happy with their request and my photos were appreciated by them.

But the entire situation was a very big mess. I had more than 25 people approaching me there. At the end of the day I was experienicing the following situation.

1. With 300+ Photos in my CF Card-did not know which one to print and what one not to.

2. Managing people and their request

3. Getting Prints delivered the same day with out loosing the event coverage.

4. I had managed to sell around 100Prints and could not cater another 35 people's request.

Please help

Well one way to make it easy on yourself would be to post all the pictures on your site (assuming you have one) in a group Called "Rowing Event - Jun 23 2008". Give all the interested parties your business card and they can go to your site and order the pictures they want.

RTMiller wrote in post #5777104
Well one way to make it easy on yourself would be to post all the pictures on your site (assuming you have one) in a group Called "Rowing Event - Jun 23 2008". Give all the interested parties your business card and they can go to your site and order the pictures they want.

It is a Excellent idea but some of the Rowers who come here to participate are student of age group 7 to 18. Most of them don't have card not theirs parent do. They would like to have something instantly.

What I figured out was the following things

1. Make a note of the time of the Photos what they liked to be printer and make a note of contact number and let them know a place where they can meet me after a day so that I can post process the photos and get it printer which can be delivered next day.

2. Use big Memory card so that I don't use multiple cards. I had a difficult time when changing card to show them the snap.

3. If possible take a thumnail of images in a slighty bigger size if possible so that I can show that to people and then take order accordingly.

I have a event in November and I want to make sure I don;t repeat what happened this time.
Again in Feb we have a big event, However I will not be able to do anything that time as I will be Rowing myself for my State.

Buy a portable printer, shoot to computer, display photos, let people order and print immediately.

It sounds like you're going for 'spur of the moment' purchases and are worried you might lose a sale if buyers don't have instant results.

Unfortunatel, you'll spend a lot more money for a $1 sale than you'll ever make doing this. Your toner alone will eat your lunch, not to mention set up, you're going to need a table and a chair. And power. And photo paper. Oh yeah, and someone has to sit at the table, take the money, make the prints. If it's you, who's out there shooting? If it's someone else, you gotta pay em!

All this for a one-time customer. Who's paying $1 (or $5). And you'll never se them again!

I would look at what others are doing - shoot, put on website, hand out cards with galery address, let customers order what they want.

But it's cool to make some money from photography and easy to get sucked into the mess. It's certainly do-able, but you might want to consider where best to spend your energy (and $$).

Good luck, regardless!

More than making money I want to ensure that I give them a memories of the event. Most of the times it is the people who come from faroff places who don't have access to Internet etc.

Installing a printer is a option again the cost of it is explained.

I ref a lot of hockey and the one I see out there is 5minutephoto.com's software. They have a few screens and a good printer and a person taking pics. Shots are about 20-25 bucks per print though. And at Horse shows you are looking at 30-35 bucks a photo.