Can you help? new to sports photography

[lawrenceaustin]

Hi all,

When I was coaching soccer in the US I noticed an opportunity in sports photography, at all your competitions there were always pro photographers snapping and selling their photos.... this doesn't happen as much in the UK and especailly not in the area i live... I want to try and get into this but have no idea as to what i should start with in terms of equipment, technique etc...

I am considering this as a career change and would be willing to put in a substancial amount of money to make my shots professional but I just don't know where to start...

Can you help?!!

a very grateful enthusiast from Essex in the UK.

Lawrence

[BLS439]

Shooting sports for profit is not something that's really just easy to jump into. Equipment can be very expensive. If you're going to go all out and jump in to give the best results you can you may end up needing some high end equipment.

What photog's in my area commonly use for such events are: 2 Canon 1D MKIIN Cameras (although they are now trading up for the new 1D MKIII), Canon 400 f2.8 IS lenses (some will use a 300 f2.8), Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS, Canon 17-40 f4/16-35 f2.8, fast CF/SD cards, and carbon fiber monopod. Some will have the second camera set-up to shoot remotely and others will have it on them to use for shots they can't get with the uber long glass.

I would get a hold of Jorgemonkey...I'm pretty sure he's shooting soccer similar to what you're describing.

[jorgemonkey]

I saw this earlier and didn't have a chance to post on it, but since I got time now I will

I've been shooting some MTB and some road cycling on my own, and that has been pretty easy to get into. Youth sports, on the other hand is a whole different ball game.

I work freelance for a company called Action Shooters, and I have a blast. We are still shooting with film, since we do our own film processing & printing. We're working on getting some digital printers in the near future though. We pretty much shoot the games on saturday, print everything out overnight, and sell the photographs at the fields on sunday.

Gearwise we have Canon film bodies, but they'll picking up some 1D MKIII's. Bodywise I'm used to shooting with either a 400 F2.8 with a 2x converter for the larger fields, or a 300 F2.8 with a 2x converter for the smaller fields. I've got one of those lenses on a monopod, and then a 70-200 F2.8 with a 2x converter on a seperate body. My favorite combo is the 300 & 70-200 though.

As far as I can tell, the process we do to get to the tournaments/games is this:

We contact the league/tournament directors, and ask them if we can have permission to take photos at the tournament. We tell them exactly what our plans are in terms of how many games we'll shoot, and how we sell the images. We also give (I think its 5%) of our sales back to the tournament/league. During the games, we hang out flyers to the coaches letting them know when the parents can buy the pictures.

On average we'll have 2 shooters at each field location, and we shoot about 18-25 games each per day. Its tough, but I love it.

Thats kinda long winded, and now its my bedtime, so if you've got any more questions about our setup (there is some changes I would make if I was running the operation let me know and I'll get back to you tomorow

[Homer]

Hi all,

When I was coaching soccer in the US I noticed an opportunity in sports photography, at all your competitions there were always pro photographers snapping and selling their photos.... this doesn't happen as much in the UK and especailly not in the area i live... I want to try and get into this but have no idea as to what i should start with in terms of equipment, technique etc...

I am considering this as a career change and would be willing to put in a substancial amount of money to make my shots professional but I just don't know where to start...

Can you help?!!

a very grateful enthusiast from Essex in the UK.

Lawrence

I'm gonna go in another direction than what's been posted already. I agree with what's been said about equipment needed, but what's been said is directed at bigger operations (if I'm wrong than I'm sorry). I feel what your looking at is something a lot smaller. Don't know what you have already but will say that you need a nice camera, I personally have the MK IIN and you'll need some good glass. If your gonna shoot the action the camera I have allows me to capture more with the 8fps. Timing is great but having the flexability to shoot the action as it happens and capture the one shot in 1/8 second helps. As for the lens I shoot all my sports with the 70-200 L f/2.8 IS with a 1.4x converter. This gives me the range I need and also gives me a fast focus. Now I would love to have the 400 f/2.8 or even the 300 f/2.8 but money is an issue here. I think with a set up like I have you can get some very nice action shots that the kids and their parents will love.

I do agree in that you should talk to the directors or people in charge of the league / tournament about shooting and selling pictures.

Here's what I've done to sell the shots. After obtaining permission, I'll shoot the games and then post the pictures on a site called eventpicture.com. What I like about them is they do all the work. All I do is take and post the shots and eventpictures handles the orders and ships out the product to the customers. There's a one-time start-up fee of $20 and then they get 10% of your fee (this get lower depending on how much you sell). You can set it up so that every two weeks they send any sales you may have aquired to paypal (no cost). I have a full-time job (non-photography) and shoot as a side business and not having to deal with orders and mailing our products really helps.

I've had some post-cards made through vistaprint and pass them out to parents / family so they know where to go to find / view their pictures. If they place an order I'm given an email indicating that an order was placed and how much it was for.

Hope this helps you out.

Jim

[jorgemonkey]

Here's what I've done to sell the shots. After obtaining permission, I'll shoot the games and then post the pictures on a site called eventpicture.com. What I like about them is they do all the work. All I do is take and post the shots and eventpictures handles the orders and ships out the product to the customers. There's a one-time start-up fee of $20 and then they get 10% of your fee (this get lower depending on how much you sell). You can set it up so that every two weeks they send any sales you may have aquired to paypal (no cost). I have a full-time job (non-photography) and shoot as a side business and not having to deal with orders and mailing our products really helps.

I've had some post-cards made through vistaprint and pass them out to parents / family so they know where to go to find / view their pictures. If they place an order I'm given an email indicating that an order was placed and how much it was for.

Hope this helps you out.

Jim

This is pretty much what I do with my MTB races that I've shot. The difference is I use a company called Exposuremanger where I upload my photos and they get to deal with all the printing & orders. It works quite well for me.

[ken1953]

Hello Lawrence,
Mind you, I'm still and amateur at all of this, but check out the site listed in my signature below, and go to WTR or Sundwall Photography.
The shots by me were all done with 2 Pentax *ist DL's. One with an SMCP DA 18-55mm kit lens and the other with an SMCP DA 50-200mm f4-5.6 ED lens. All together I have about $2500.00 USD tied up into cameras and lenses. The reason I have 2 identical systems is because my wife and I wanted the same cameras, so we doubled up. So divide the above figure by 2 and I have about $1250.00 tied up in one system.
As I said...I'm still an amateur, but I think most of my pics only lack from "lack of experience". Many of the shots are every bit as good as some of the guys who were shooting with the big expensive cameras and lenses. Of course with the shorter lenses, you'll need to get much closer than the guys with the long lenses...but, you don't have to spend a lot of money to get started. And it would give you a chance to try it out before you dump a lot of money into it.
Just a thought for you,
Ken

[SmartWombat]

Lawrence, there was a company at Focus on Imaging back in February selling trailers, printers, and other stuff for event photography.
Next door there was another company advertising for event photographers!
I'm not sure they were unrelated

I'll go through the piles of literature from the show and see if I can and drag out the information.
There's not many companies doing it now, and getting in on the ground floor is good.