artisitc_eye

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<p>Walt - you wouldn't sit outside the towing company's business and give away tire changes for free would you? That's not cool.<br>

As for aspiring photographers,<br>

"What does "support the growth of aspring photographers" actually mean? You seem to imply that it means "help them go pro and sell their work." To me it just means help them take better pictures. Most of the people in the camera club I know have day jobs and just enjoy taking pics for fun. If someone enjoys it why not give it away for free? Why should they or I care about protecting your business model? If I help someone with a flat tire should I care that the local towing company lost money?"<br>

really? That's really how you feel. Gosh. I feel that a photo club in that nature (the support aspiring photographers) can go both ways, helping people take better pictures and reach their own personal goals. Just think back to when you or maybe someone you know like friends of the club with day jobs (which sadly, I too still try to hold) became interested in making a career out of their talent. I guess I'm a softy, but I would never intentionally encourage another person to cause harm or ill profit to another human... unless of course they did not stop on the side of the road and help you change that tire! :-)<br>

Jeff - I follow the same path. My images are up as soon as humanly possible, the organization and numbering of my images (bib #'s need to match photo's and participants so they can easily find their shot) takes a good chunk of time depending on the size of the event. Of course when I'm out shooting from 6 a.m. till 8 p.m. with several thousand images on my plate, I still slam the coffee and sit down and process them over night until my upload starts. I'm glad you mentioned the speed of delivery, because I'll tell you my husband has given me grief about that time and time again! I can't tell him enough that time is of the essence! As for the rage, it wouldn't be there if I wasn't passionate about what I do.</p>

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<p>Thanks for your quick responses! I am not a member of the mentioned club, but of one in my area. I had thought of mentioning this to them... especially at the moment, as I'm under a bit of stress. My computer crashed in the middle of an upload, the external hard drive with my images on it seems to be damaged & the images did not transfer to the machine. I'm holding my breath till my husband gets home, he's an IT guy and I do hope he can fix it! If not, I'm out a day's worth of images. :-0 Though after reading their forum posts, I really do not feel they are the slightest bit friendly. :-(<br>

In my contract it does state that I am the official photographer. I have a link on the events website & so far the club does not, and I do not believe they will be getting one. I would really hate to pursue the legality of the contract, because you can't stop the public from photographing events and they are human too. Although after reading their site and blog posts, they fail to mention the sit down meeting with the PR person who specifically told them that I was a hired professional & they were to stay out of my way and in the general public areas. Sometimes I wish I was a mean girl! I would have barked at them the day's of & this wouldn't be the issue. I know full and well, even after this experience I will have a hard time being mean or stern in future situations. Perhaps I could have pulled my contract out of my gear bag, pointed to it and said "See, you need to go away." in a nice way of course! LOL</p>

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<p>I could really use a hand folks. I'm about to explode with rage, though I know I will live through this... right now, I am afraid I'm going to loose my mind.<br>

So, I was contracted (hired with very minimal pay, but I don't ask for much as I make my earnings off of my sales) to photograph an event over a weekend, two hours away from my home. I photograph sporting events, on a professional level. I provide finish line photography (among many other things) for events for a reasonable cost. I enjoy doing this, always have, because these people participating in such enduring events are simply inspiring to me. I'm not too athletic myself, so even running a 5k race is an inspiration to me! :-)<br>

Now, the local camera club ASKED for permission by the event organizer to come to the event and take pictures. The PR person who hired me was aware of this, however she had not worked with this club before and was not aware of their methods. The club shows up, with their mob of Digital Rebels and slow lenses, shoots over my shoulder (literally at one point) and gets in the way of a pace car at a finish line among other very unprofessional things. Yes I realize that by posting this I may be thought of as unprofessional, especially if my dear camera club friends are reading this... but honestly I am o.k. with it. I'm here for support, and I'm not the bad guy in this situation.<br>

So here is my pickle. I worked two days behind the camera, and I'm going on almost 20 hours of post processing work. There are thousands of images, most of which need to be numbered individually or in small batches of 2-5 images to accommodate the easy search feature I offer my customers. This is an average event for me, lots of time and sweat for a game of chance at sales. I usually do well enough to make a very small salary over the summer. <br>

Now I google the name of the event, and photos. I see several links to their site talking about giving away the photos for free. I see a forum where a poster talks poorly about me selling the images when she says after another poster mentions my website:<br>

"Yes, we're well aware of her. She is selling the photos; we are giving them away like we always do when we are asked to photograph local events. It is our way of giving back to the community. I will just leave it at that. No need to air dirty laundry. Michelle" </p>

Here is my question for you folks and friends of Photo.net:

How is a camera club who aims to support the growth of aspiring photographers able to sleep at night knowing they are hurting a local business? Seriously, when I go to my next club meeting I'm going to say "Hey gang! Let's got to the next wedding/event and take pictures and then give them away." Is this not wrong? There are many more details that bring my anger to the place it is in, but I do not want to name names.

I'm livid

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Mariela,

Your friends and family all have opinions that will matter to you, because they are there for you. You need to make your decision on what is best for you. Set aside the cost for a moment and look at what you want to gain from it. Are you looking for the degree to say "I have a degree" so you may be more likely to be hired down the road? Are you interested in the material you will learn and what you can take from the courses to apply to your talent and ability? Or is this something that you have dreamed about and have not yet found the specific path you will follow with your photography, but want to gain experience?

All of these things had crossed my mind over the past 8 years. I was 2 seconds away from studying underwater motion picture at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, CA back then. I had a dream, I was crushed when I decided to go another route. Now I run my own business shooting sports, portraits and weddings & I could not be happier! Well of course, more wedding bookings would be good... :-) I will be starting an Associates in Photography program at my local community college this fall to learn more about the thing I love most! I'm 30. I work full time. I run a business full time in the summer & part time the rest of the year. The degree program may take me 3 or 4 years. YOU ARE YOUNG!!!! And I assure you that you have much more energy than I do! ;-D

My last rant for you. Look outside of your home town. Life experience, travel, spontaneous life changes are all what make for a well rounded individual in my opinion! Get out of dodge girl, and go see the world! You can make it on your own & amaze yourself!

No assistant needed unless you want to loose more money by paying the assistant. Though some assistants work for good home cooked meals per my experience!

After processing thousands upon thousands of images post race, I have found the best solution to be working in ACDSee Pro2. The easiest renaming system you will find. Necessary keys are all chosen wisely and the process when multiple files are renamed with the same # is perfect for events... what I mean by that?? Is, if you have three pic's of a participant, you rename each of these 352 using a batch rename (or F2 key in ACDSee) the files are now numbered 352_1 352_2 and 352_3. Now later down the folder you come across the same #. You rename it. It will either come up as 352_1_1 or the machine will not allow you to rename it if you are numbering it simply 352 and another 352 exists. This is perfect because when all is said and done, you can change your viewing preferences to view list, then look for extra extensions to double check that you did not read the wrong # or enter it incorrectly. It's great for me, I'm as dyslexic as they come & numbers and I do not get along when I am in a hurry to process 2,000 photos!

As far as time, like anything as you get used to it & better at the whole process the work flow runs smoother and takes less time. I am now sitting at the computer for 3-4 hours for a 500 participant tri. That's a good 1500 images we are talking about running through. Not bad!

Feel free to call me with any questions about getting started, sales, contacting vendors and race directors & whatever else you may need advise on. So long as you don't live in Madison, WI!!!! :-) I'm willing to help you out.

David, thank you for the update. Sadly, you are correct. This is not dead & Mr. Peter Wolf still continues to act on his Patent's forcing other hard working photographers (not machines recording images based on a motion sensor! http://www.photocrazy.com/RCS/RCS.html which in my opinion does not count as photography but as surveillance) to cower and fear his patent.

If you explore his website as listed below, you will soon discover that Mr. Peter Wolf is the madman behind this scheme and abuse of the fantastic legal system we all trust and live by. "The process of offering event photos for inspection, selection and distribution via the Internet is protected by U.S. Patents No. 6,985,875 and No. 7,047,214. We welcome others who wish to license the process from us. Kindly contact us by email or phone to discuss the details." This comment taken from http://www.photocrazy.com/FAQ.html clearly shows the intention of this patent is not only to drive business his way, but to profit off of all other hard working photographers & companies alike.

On an added note to the sportsshooter forum, Printroom has this agreement & information available to their photographers...

"Printroom Sports Event Program Info and Guidelines

* Do you shoot participants in sporting events?

* Do you associate a unique identifier (such as bib number, name or time) with each image?

* Do the participants find the images using a unique pre-determined identifier?

If the answer is affirmative to all of the above questions, you should enroll in the Printroom Sports Event Program. The Printroom Sports Event Program protects you by properly licensing the required patent technology to facilitate your sports event photography workflow.

United States Patent Nos. 7,047,214 and 6,985,875 cover online sales of photos of sporting event participants in which a unique identifier (such as a bib number, participant name, RF ID chip number or date and time) is used to find those photos.

Any images falling within this program will pass through an additional fee of $1.50 per image to the end consumer. The photographer will pay no additional cost, but will be 100% licensed to utilize the above mentioned technology. The fee does not apply to team images used in the Team&Player posters, to images purchased as "order all images in a gallery", or to photographer own orders. "

So now, not only are the photographers suffering from this absurdity but their customers are as well.

When does this end Mr. Peter Wolf? Will your conscious ever catch you?

I hope so.

Disgusting.

Victor,

One more thing to think of...

A timing guy I work with once mentioned syncing my images with his timing info, by the file time stamp. Now this is not fail proof, so I choose the old school route. But perhaps if you speak to the timing guys on your end, they would likely be willing to share info with you.

I have also heard of a radio frequency recording device that would automatically sync the timing data with the image data. No idea where to buy this, or how many big bucks it costs. I'd guess that some of the big dogs (Brightroom & ASI) might use it??

Let us know if you find something.

Laura

Victor,

This is the story of my life! I choose to manually enter the bib #'s in, because it helps my sales out dramatically. I have found that using ACDSee's Pro software is the best for doing batch re-names, and individual re-names. However, the company I use for order fulfillment is Eventpictures.com. They provide their photographers with a software called "Fastcaption" which is fantastic for re-naming images according to bib #'s.

I know other companies have some type of # reading software, fully electronic it reads the image data & picks out a bib #. I have heard many customers complain that the "company" said their bib # was far different than it actually was, and it was clearly visible in the image. You don't want to play that game. If you have the option of letting the participants search by bib #, then you want it done right. Only a live human eye can clearly decipher the bib # through a swinging arm or stream of vomit!

Bottom line, my .02 is, do it manual. Choose the best software (by trial and error) and sit down with a bottle of water and go! I re-name 1500 images in about 3 hours or less, depending on how often I get distracted. :-) Sure that's a big chunk of time, but in the end my payout is well worth it!

Good luck and feel free to e-mail me with ?'s

Laura

Zach - I do shoot wide open... depending on the scene. I use my 80-200 2.8, which is a fantastic "partner" in my business. :-) I still find no need to spend the extra chunk of $ for the VR, rarely do I use it in the back of a pace car/bike and if I use it inside a church with crummy light... I already have crummy light, so I feel like saying OH WELL! I'm sure I could be proved wrong if someone handed me their lens to switch back to and test... till then, I'm more wealthy! Take a look at some of the big frys like Brightroom & ASI.. they are always hiring & they have tons of events EVERYWHERE you can choose from. I'm sure you could give it a go with one of them.

Leopold - Those garbage bags seem to be popular! What does "pastry bagged" mean, could you give a description on that? I do have a pop up tent I got from Walmart for $110 (first up) that works wonders! Purchased it the morning of a pouring rain tri. & it saved the day... though those darn rainy day tri's just don't sell like the blue sky days. So the company you work with does not do any on-line selling? The thought of printing on-site makes me shake, my day is long enough as it is! Sounds like you have fun doing it :-)

Thanks for your feedback guys & enjoy the end of the season!

Laura

Hello PN'ers!

I'm looking to connect with other sports photographers who photograph

triathlons, either for your personal business or for another company.

I would love to pick your brain (and let you pick mine) on a few topics that

relate specifically to tri's.

Here are some ideas...

1. Swim, Bike, Run... do you get it all? I have recently been bringing my bike

along, even to the short sprint's, and getting out on the course for more

action! (Keep in mind, I am a one chick team, who hires for large events on

occasion) A customer requested more to choose from, so now I am busting my

behind and riding the course like lightning! :-)

2. Workflow, Workflow, Workflow! A never ending cycle. What do you find works

for you? My list goes on and on, but I have yet to find the perfect solution.

Sorting & re-naming photos by bib# is a time consuming task that must be done.

How do you do what you do?

3. Gear. That's a no-brainer. Monopod? Favorite lens? (no body wars, i like

what i shoot & so do you) Rain coverage?

Now the list can go on and on, and those of you who shoot tri's know the

pleasure and pain of it... So let's share!

Not until today!

Thanks for asking the PN users. Imagecapsule.com looks fantastic! I look forward to viewing their prices, and making an order. What an easy route!

Good luck,

Laura

Thanks Chris,

I understand the $ situation... that is something I had not thought of, and I wonder how they (and even Photoreflect) would work around that?

I agree with Leopold, Photoreflect is a very nice site as well & I happen to love many of the features! If they offered order fulfillment with that 15% I would be there in a flash :-) I just cant seem to justify paying out 2x's... "that's my money" comes to my mouth in a childish voice!

Good luck on your hunt Chris, I hope you are to find someone local.

So as far as EventPictures, it has worked very well for me. I am looking for another company, for a few reasons...

1. Not wanting all of my eggs in one basket

2. Hoping to find an easier to navigate site for the dear customers of mine that just can not figure it out... lord help me, I try to understand!

3. Would like to see the customers have the option to change an image to black and white, without me!

Other than that, and I'm a picky person... the site is fantastic! The price of storage, once you go over the 5gb free, is cheap & you can change it monthly as needed. There is no yearly fee. You set your prices, and they take a small cut which I consider worth every penny when there are weeks that I have 100's of prints going out at any given time... I would never want to handle my own printing, been there done that. I work full time, and value my spare time... enough so that, here I am! :-) What more can I say, you can have assistants work an event with you & earn a % of their sales that you decide on. The list goes on and on!

BUT! I am still interested in hearing from others who use a similar service, on what their set-up is like. So please, send me your feedback!

Thanks again,

Laura

Funny, I just replied to Chris in another topic about EP! They are fantastic, and I would have never made it this far without them!

I need to run, but I will fill everyone interested in more when I return.

Thanks,

Laura

Chris,

Get yourself an account with www.EventPictures.com

You will be amazed at what an on-line hosting company can do for your sales/image/work flow. Take a look at my domain (or sub-domain really) at www.photosbyartisticeye.com I started off on the same note, shooting tri's because my husband was competing & the next thing you know... I have myself a part time business that is exploding!

If you have any questions, just shout them out! & for those of you who may sign up one day, feel free to use my name & e-mail Laura Alvarez artistic_eye_photography@yahoo.com

Hello PN users!

I'm looking to find out who uses who, in the world of order fulfillment and

sports photography. I use EventPictures currently, and they offer photographers

a feature which allows the participant to search for their photo by the bib #

they wore for their race & also to create several categories in which to

organize photos.

There is a ton of competition in the market of order fulfillment, but not

directly with the ability to use bib #'s to find photos.

Thanks a bunch for your reply, I appreciate it!

Hello!

In the wide, wide world of coffee table books I have come across Artography

Publishing http://designer.artography.com/DesignerHome.asp?Page=designer

Their software is very easy to use, and it offers a "spread image across two

pages" option which no other company seems to have.

I was wondering if any of the Photo.net users have any experience with their

product, and what their thoughts were.?? After printing a book with Picaboo,

and being a bit disappointed, I am very hesitant to print another without

hearing from other photographers.

Thanks a million,

Laura

Picaboo http://www.picaboo.com/ support claims to have the option to omit the logo in the back, or you can tear out the velum page?? I ordered a sample book a few months ago before the new upgrade in software & I love it. A few quirks to watch out for, but otherwise worth the small price.

Keep in mind your clients can order (through you) an additional high quality book if they are interested. These are just great as a "bring it to work brag book"

Good luck,

Laura

Oh how this has been an interesting read! I am on the "official photographer" end of the stick, and I work events without contracts to avoid complications... which my husband/"business manager" :-) thinks is the case.

So my question to those of you who have voiced your opinion in this forum, is should I be bothered by the guy who shows up at my largest event of the year and hollers out "Go to flicker, I'm not paid!" at the race participants? His shots were quite point and shoot, and of course thats not competition, but I'm afraid it takes away from my sales? ;-( Should I stop fretting over freebies?

Deb - On the note of your daughter, perhaps you can arrange a meeting with her and the official photographer & get her some experience working as an assistant?? I know I would be willing, we all need a break now and then!

I'm so excited, Thanks guys!

I asked for quotes from H1 Photo, Calumet, Adorama & B&H Photo and I am taking Calumets offer of $1931.91 with shipping & no tax

So to be a bit more specific on my purchase here is the list

D200 Body only * MB-D200 Vertical Grip * (2) EN-ELE3 li-ion battery * SB-600 Flash * Sandisk 2GB Ultra II CF card * 62mm uv filter * 67mm uv filter * 77mm uv filter

I have a SB-800 and love it, just need more light for dark & dingy churches. The filters are a goof. I had my husband buy me filters as a gift, and he choose all polarized which are nice, but not every day nice. The memory cards make me laugh, are they going to be as cheap as film soon? Seriously, the price just keeps dropping! There will be a day when digtal is a thing of the past, and we purchase brain scanners to read and print the image as we "see" it! Yikes

Thanks again for everything guys, you made this a very stress free experience.

Laura

Thanks guys! Resellerratings.com is now my "go-to" without a doubt! Several of the dealers,fotoconnection - best price cameras - usa photonation - cci camera city - royal camera ,had terrible ratings & reviews straight out of a nightmare! I'm very glad to have been directed their way & now I have narrowed down my search to H1 Photo, Calumet, Adorama & B&H Photo.

Thanks again!

Thank you! I will take a look.

Laura

I know B&H is a trusted dealer, but for the savings of $500+ US dollars, I can

buy more glass!? What to do?

I'm looking at a D200, and would like to purchase a second flash (SB600) and an

additional lens 2.8 28-70 ED-IFAF-S Zoom Nikkor... not to mention the dang MB

battery pack.

I'm not rich, and I could really use a good deal. But I am going to trust you

folks at Photo.net to guide me here... do I go with a "good deal" where I can

haggle a package? Or do I stick with B&H?

Thanks for your two cents!

Laura

Jennifer,

I have used Event Pictures (http://www.eventpictures.com) for 2 years now & I love it! Great customer service & even better "user" service, they are always there to help when I have a question.

I have my own subdomain (http://www.artistic_eye.eventpictures.com) which costs nothing, and is very basic but most importantly easy to use. Look for all the details in the photographers section, located off the main page, but in the end... it cost me $10 to sign up -one time fee- and I pay a VERY small commision on all of my sales, and a very small ammount for storage over 1g.

For a sports & portrait photographer, with not much to start out with, this site has been a blessing!

:-) Good luck,