Access to Photos after Team/Individual photo shoot

<p>Hi, I'm a long time reader of Pnet forums, making my first posting. <br>

Recently, I volunteered to take team and individual photos for my little girl's soccer team, as well as those for her coach's second team. This was my first time to do something "formal" like this (mostly I shoot travel - we live in Europe), and predictably, the second shoot was smoother than the first, incorporating some lessons learned.<br>

I took several individual shots, several group photos (hard to get a group of 3-4 year olds to all look at the camera at the same time), and a number of "action" shots of the kids during practice. I selected the best, edited / processed them in LR, and then posted them to a specific Dropbox folder and sent the parents the link to their child's photos. I also offered to burn larger (i.e., printable) sizes to disk if desired, but so far, nobody has requested that. <br>

So, given that background, my questions:</p>

<ul>

<li>Is there a better way to do this? I hope to have the opportunity to take the team photos for the Spring as well, and am interested in the community's thoughts on other techniques to streamline delivery to parents the next time around. I don't currently have anything like a Zenfolio / Smugmug / Photoshelter account, but haven't ruled that out as a future possibility. Would an account like that have made it easier, or in any other way more beneficial than using DB? The one thing that jumps out is the abilitiy to provide prints directly should a parent want them. In any case, these shoots were uncompensated, and strictly for the benefit of the parents.</li>

<li>I did not do model releases, because I have no intention of doing anything else with these photos. Was this a bad move, and should I draft something up in the future? </li>

<li>What is a reasonable time to keep those folders up and accessible for the parents? Currently my plan is to keep them up for 3-4 months, and then send a mass email to everyone giving them another opportunity to download them before deleting them. I do of course keep multiple backups (HDD, cloud).</li>

</ul>

<p>Thanks in advance for the advice.<br>

Dave Fugazzotto<br>

<a href="http://www.sandandtsunamis.com">http://www.sandandtsunamis.com</a></p>

<p>I use SmugMug. You just select the files, click upload and it's done. Then you send out the link to the page to the parents and they can order prints directly from SmugMug. If you're doing this for free you can set it up so the parents get the prints at cost. Or if you're doing it for profit you can get a professional account where you set your own selling prices and SmugMug will send you the difference between the selling price and lab price. <br /><br />You don't need a model release -- you're only selling/giving the images to the people you photographed (well, their parents anyway), not to a third party.</p>

<p>I have a much simplier way of handling freebies like this. I give the team manager a CD with the photos on it and he/she can burn a CD for each team member or pass it around.</p>

<p>I usually crop everything at 8X12 if I can as that allows them to also print at 4x6 at the local Costco or WalMart. If they want something different I will do it for them but there would be a fee.</p>

<p>I also tell them the images are for their own non-commercial use explaining if any show up on display somewhere or in a magazine or brochure etc I would expect photo credit and more than likely payment.</p>

<p>Thanks, Gents...I may just go the simpler, CD route next time, but I'm interested in Smugmug or one of the others. Craig, do you have any thoughts on the recent upgrades to Smugmug? </p>

<p>Stop doing this for nothing! You are taking jobs and income away from professional photogs. <br>

Here in the US there are photo printing companies that provide envelopes with prints and other photo items listed for purchase...by the parents. Each ten is given a panck to distribute to each player or parent. they bring them back on photo day and pre-pay for the photos they want.generally, if not always, they ten gets a share of the photg's profit. That is negotiated between the photog and team/organization.<br>

An alternative is to print onsite. Of course with this there is an investment in computers and printers and a trailer or van to store and drive the equipment to the playing fields for photo day.</p>

<p>Steve, thanks for the suggestions. I'm currently not in the US, so do you know of something similar in Germany? Frankly, since this was my first go at shooting something like this, I didn't feel comfortable charging. Now that I've done it once (with satisfied "customers,") I think I may give it a try, though probably for minimal profit (at least initially...later, I'll be rich beyond my wildest dreams). We recently had family photos shot by a local photographer whose business model incorporates Smugmug as the delivery solution. It seems to work fine for her. Might be time to pull the trigger and set up an account.</p>

<p>"Craig, do you have any thoughts on the recent upgrades to Smugmug?"<br />Haven't really had a chance to look at them. I've been perfectly happy with the way it worked before so I didn't see the need to fix what wasn't broke.</p>