A better workflow for selling photos?

First, a bit of background:

I started shooting action shots of my son's soccer matches, and set up a site to sell them to the other parents (http://shop.adamcurrey​.com) I realise that having a potential market of maybe 12-13 families was limiting, but I figured I'd try it just to see what happened. Well, to cut a long story short, nothing at all. $0 in sales to date.

So, I'm toying with biting the bullet and shooting a bunch of games for other teams as well (same club) to see how that works out. The only problem is that my current workflow isn't really scalable enough to cope.

Currently, workflow is like this:-

1. Shoot game
2. Import into Lightroom
3. Filter out junk from keepers, edit for exposure, crop, etc. (anything up to 2-3 hours depending)
4. Upload full-size keepers to my shop site (30+ minutes depending)

This works ok for the volume I've been doing so far (1 game per weekend, 20-40 shots) but I can't see it being scalable to 10 or 15 or 20 games per weekend. Suggestions?

One thing I learned about online websites is that many parents don't have a clue how to use the internet. You can try to print out the pictures and sell them and the games to see if that generates more sales.

IMHO. I think you are taking way to long editing the pictures (up to 3 hours for up to 40 pictures). There are ways in lightroom to copy settings from previous pictures which will help you speed up your workflow.

I started an Individual Coverage sign up so that I am spending my camera time on those kids who have parents wanting to buy pictures. I charge $40 up front and provide customers with a minimum of 5 photoshop layouts along with 20-50 stock photos for them to choose from. On average each parent who signs up spends about $100-$200/ season on pictures of their child.

Sports_Dude wrote in post #5980777
One thing I learned about online websites is that many parents don't have a clue how to use the internet.

Hard to imagine in this day and age! Not saying I think you're wrong, just that it's hard to imagine.

Sports_Dude wrote in post #5980777
IMHO. I think you are taking way to long editing the pictures (up to 3 hours for up to 40 pictures). There are ways in lightroom to copy settings from previous pictures which will help you speed up your workflow.

Yeah I do know that, I guess I like to attend to each picture according to its own needs. I also know that some people advocate posting up unedited photos and then edit only when a photo is actually ordered, but honestly I can't figure how that would work out.

Sports_Dude wrote in post #5980777
I started an Individual Coverage sign up so that I am spending my camera time on those kids who have parents wanting to buy pictures. I charge $40 up front and provide customers with a minimum of 5 photoshop layouts along with 20-50 stock photos for them to choose from. On average each parent who signs up spends about $100-$200/ season on pictures of their child.

Interesting approach. I hadn't thought of that.

Only 20-40 shots for a game? From my experience sports photography is a numbers game and if you're only taking 40 shots then you're minimising your chances of getting killer shots, although that's not really the issue here so apologies for getting sidetracked!

Invest in some quicker editing software. From my personal experience, I have found that I am easily 10x faster in Photo Mechanic than anything else. I use it to cull my shots from the usual 250 or so per game down to around 125 that I put on my site. You can set PM to have default crop sizes, so all you have to do is decide whether you like the frame or not, then crop it to your liking, and move onto the next shot. Then just run a batch export for your web-sized uploads.

It sounds like you are putting a lot of time into individual shots. While I don't post "unedited" work on my site, I probably spend, on average, less than 10 seconds on any one shot. I cull/delete in PM, then run a batch action in PS CS3 that does noise reduction if needed, curves, sharpening, watermark/text placement, and then flattens the image for upload. On a good day, I can process 2 games/hr from card to web.

I wouldn't be uploading the full-res shots to your site - try some quailty 8-10 800px wide shots to showcase your work and only upload the full-res shots if you have to. Most quality 10 (in Photoshop) 800px wide images are <200k and take a heck of a lot less time to upload anywhere than a stack of full-res images.

Use actions to your advantage; say you find yourself doing a similar sharpening across your imagse set up a quick generic sharpening action that you can batch across your images then make minor adjustments to any that need further work.

Load photo -> curves, sharpening, saturation etc. if applicable, crop then export as full-res and 800px watermarked sample shot takes me <~30 seconds and I don't think I'm that fast - I used to take a heck of a lot longer but had to learn to speed up since PP'ing was taking up all my time!

If they're going to the website rather than just being emailed to someone I spend more time saving a 150px thumbnail for each shot then dropping them into the website template and batch uploading them to my server.

Take your lap top to the game, shoot the first half, then do a quick crop/edit on the pics.
Show the parents a slideshow at the end of the game, while the kids are changing, and hand out a few cards with your web site addy. Should work wonders.
No laptop? Hard to believe in this day and age.

Shoot with RAW with a small JPG to use as a proof. Once it is ordered then feel free to edit the raw?

I agree with Jim & Adam. PrintRoom allwos uploading small images. You can set it up so if/when a shot is ordered, you will be notified & can upload the full res image file.

Most of the guys who's cars I shoot are older, so I print a small sheet with directions & if they say they don't have inet, I tell them to give the sheet to their grandkids.
It's worth printing out business cards with the sport related info on it & give them away like popcorn. Some parents like to wait 'till the end of the season, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to get their email so you can remind them that you're going to delete the files to make room for the next years images. (Doesn't mean that you actually have to delete them. It's called "Take Away" marketing.)

Get it right in camera and reduce the PP faffing. 3 hours for 40 shots is too much - you will not be able to manage multiple events a weekend. Remember - your customers are not looking for photographic works of art, but sharp, well-exposed images of their kids.

My thoughts:
1/ Shoot JPEG and adjust the sharpness/saturation/c​ontrast to get the results you need out of the camera. Also focus on getting WB right. Anything extra can be batch-applied in LR
2/ Use halftime to weed and upload your images - that can also continue while you shoot (your laptop has a high speed data connection, right?)
3/ Market, market, market - hand out lots of cards

Vandit

vkalia wrote in post #5982067
Also focus on getting WB right.

This is especially important if you want to use small JPGs as proofs/previews!

Lightroom is great... you dont need anything but practice to make your workflow faster. If your keeper rate is less than 80% you need to do a better job on the "camera" part. Learn to keep the horizon straight in camera and keep the picture framed correctly in camera as much as possible.

Lightroom has a sync feature that is a big time saver.

Typical game for me is 200-300 pics. Hour of editing and 175-225 keepers minimum. I think a good goal for editing is 1 minute shooting = 1 minute editing.... so for an hour game you should be able to edit in an hour.

Billo78 wrote in post #5981633
Only 20-40 shots for a game? From my experience sports photography is a numbers game and if you're only taking 40 shots then you're minimising your chances of getting killer shots, although that's not really the issue here so apologies for getting sidetracked!

I typically shoot maybe 150 per game - 20-40 is just the keepers that take all the time to PP/upload.

jhawksley wrote in post #5981709
You can set PM to have default crop sizes, so all you have to do is decide whether you like the frame or not, then crop it to your liking, and move onto the next shot. Then just run a batch export for your web-sized uploads.

I don't see how that would work for soccer - with the action varying in distance from me, the crop size varies from shot to shot too.

jhawksley wrote in post #5981709
It sounds like you are putting a lot of time into individual shots. While I don't post "unedited" work on my site, I probably spend, on average, less than 10 seconds on any one shot. I cull/delete in PM, then run a batch action in PS CS3 that does noise reduction if needed, curves, sharpening, watermark/text placement, and then flattens the image for upload. On a good day, I can process 2 games/hr from card to web.

Agreed, I think I am, but the PP required seems to vary a fair bit from image to image, so I'm not sure batching would work so well. Willing to give it a try though.

Jim G wrote in post #5981779
I wouldn't be uploading the full-res shots to your site - try some quailty 8-10 800px wide shots to showcase your work and only upload the full-res shots if you have to. Most quality 10 (in Photoshop) 800px wide images are <200k and take a heck of a lot less time to upload anywhere than a stack of full-res images.

The thing about this is that I use progalleries.com.au - basically customers order prints on the site and the prints are processed from whatever size images you've uploaded. As far as I know, there isn't a mechanism for notifying me of orders so I can upload full size images before fulfullment, or even the option of self-fulfillment. I guess I may have to consider another provider, but progalleries is the only .au-based one I've found.

vkalia wrote in post #5982067
Get it right in camera and reduce the PP faffing. 3 hours for 40 shots is too much - you will not be able to manage multiple events a weekend. Remember - your customers are not looking for photographic works of art, but sharp, well-exposed images of their kids.

My thoughts:
1/ Shoot JPEG and adjust the sharpness/saturation/c​ontrast to get the results you need out of the camera. Also focus on getting WB right. Anything extra can be batch-applied in LR
2/ Use halftime to weed and upload your images - that can also continue while you shoot (your laptop has a high speed data connection, right?)
3/ Market, market, market - hand out lots of cards

Vandit

The "get it right in the camera" advice is always a good one, but easier said than done. Soccer games are quite difficult WRT the lighting and position of the sun (frequently shoot at midday, requiring copious amounts of light fill in PP to fill shadows for example.) I always shoot in RAW, BTW. I do all my PPing on the desktop machine at home, couldn't imagine trying to do it on a laptop crouched on the ground beside the soccer field in the midday sun. I have no Internet away from my house anyway.

eigga wrote in post #5982170
Lightroom is great... you dont need anything but practice to make your workflow faster. If your keeper rate is less than 80% you need to do a better job on the "camera" part. Learn to keep the horizon straight in camera and keep the picture framed correctly in camera as much as possible.

Lightroom has a sync feature that is a big time saver.

Typical game for me is 200-300 pics. Hour of editing and 175-225 keepers minimum. I think a good goal for editing is 1 minute shooting = 1 minute editing.... so for an hour game you should be able to edit in an hour.

Yeah I love LR. Going from PS to LR probably cut my PP time by 75%. Interesting comment about the keeper rate though - I've read elsewhere that 10% is generally considered ok for ballsports like soccer. Not that it matters that much in this case - it's the keepers that take the time, not the tossers.

Thanks for your suggestions everyone.

1. Shoot game
2. Ingest and cull using Photo Mechanic (by far the best program for this)
3. Upload to my website
4. Go eat dinner

I don't process any photos and that includes cropping until an order has been placed for the photo. Usually within 20 minutes I'm uploading the shots from that days game.

(Devils advocate)

Why would I need to buy a print? The previews on your website are easy big enough to print an ok 6x4, and there's no watermark.

Have you look at your site stats to see if anyone's even looking at the images?