I've been struggling with this problem myself and being a software developer I'm trying to come up with a means to display the image yet make it unsuitable for framing. I have developed a small application that generates a composite image which shows quite a bit of detail yet makes the image look pretty ugly when printed.
Check out this page and let me know what you think. This is an event I shot where I had little or no time for sales. So I had little choice but to post the images.
Neat idea but I find it distracting. Maybe this is why the JC Penny Portrait Studio has the computers there for you to order from at the store! (do they even post to the web later?).
Some events lend themselves to on-site viewing, like racing. Some events do not, like football, where after the game the parents and the kids want to hit the SUV and get home ASAP.
About the only solution I can think of is not to tell people "you are being a criminal if you screen capture", but rather to say "I appreciate your paid purchase. Your purchase enables me to continue photographing these events in the future."
It MIGHT have a place for something like seniors at the low end of the market. For an event like football or soccer there are too many people in the shot. I think that you won't be able to make out who is who. More importantly what kind of feedback have you gotten from your customers? I can't even see doing it for our seniors. Even with a wall display they want to sit and count zits before selecting a pose.
Eric
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I think that we are all struggling with a fine balance between protecting our sales and dealing with idiots. The question is how hard do we want to stop the idiots versus sending real customers away. I wonder how many people walk into car dealers every day, take a few test drives and leave without buying a car. What would happen if the local Ford dealer started charging $25 for a test drive, or let you try the F-150 free and then required a $25 fee to try the F-350? After all they have to cover the gas salesman (normally) has to take time off the floor. It’s part of their cost of doing business.
The advantage that the car dealer has is that they aren't giving away the product -- when you go on a test drive you have to return the car at the end and you probably can't stop and do your errands along the way. So they suffer very little "leakage" and can just set their prices to cover the costs. The same applies to the grocer -- it is both, relatively, hard to steal their stock and it is, in most places, clearly accepted as wrong.
When you allow on-line viewing you can pretty much count on a certain number of images being stolen, and since there is an easy way to steal them, raising your prices to cover may only result in more theft. We face the double challenges of selling a product that is easier to steal than most and a culture that seems to accept the theft of our creations.
It's a puzzle. I'm intrigued by Norm's "out of the box" solution to the problem -- from what he says it is working for him. I might tweak it a bit to allow ordering from the contact sheet -- with a healthy shipping / packaging charge to provide an incentive to buy on site, but basically it sounds like he's nailed one solution to the problem. It is important to remember that, amoung other things, the solution has to work for you -- it has to fit your personality and your way of doing business. So there is nothing wrong with putting images up on a web site, accepting some theft (though I hate enabling those values) and letting the revenue trickle (or flood) in -- just so long as you're able to get paid decently for your work.
We do some 65 or more events yearly. We only photograph those people wanting to purchase photographs. They pay before being photographed and we show them their image on a laptop right after being photographed. We reshoot one in about 20 people.
I would never consider selling images on line.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
We do some 65 or more events yearly. We only photograph those people wanting to purchase photographs. They pay before being photographed and we show them their image on a laptop right after being photographed. We reshoot one in about 20 people.
I would never consider selling images on line.
Points taken …. However,
Background for my statements, we are the exclusive event contractor for a state athletic association. Every state sanctioned HS payoff & championship is licensed to us. To even think about covering such events WITHOUT posting the images is nuts... FOR US. The baseball championships filled a minor league stadium. The basketball series drew 1000’s of people. One man saw the pictures, the on-site setup, the web-site, and booked us for a 48 team national tournament in the next state over. You have to cater to the audience and the customer. Our website does more than just make sales, it promotes US. Every visitor to the site is a potential new client. Every potential client is looking at dozens of ‘portfolios’. There is a value to those images even when they aren’t being purchased outright.
I’m not throwing stones at anyone’s business model, PERIOD. We all have to find what works for EACH event. To Norms credit, and I don’t know Norm, have never met him, haven’t even chatted with him on-line, he has found something that IS working for him. AWESOME!! But to think that it would work in every event situation is a whole different matter. I ONLY brought him into this because he was yanking his ears for having done what almost any other photographer out there does when faced with such a request. PERIOD. I wanted him to know that I would have done the same thing, and have. It's what we do present and try to sell. I am in no way knocking how he has chosen to conduct his business. In fact I’m actually thrilled that he has found something that is working in one type of event and has shared it, to the betterment of all of us as event shooters.
My reason for writing the prior post is because I know that many more people are reading this thread than posting to it. To that end, it IS important to discuss what does and does not work for particular types of events. To have someone think that they can to a Pop Warner football game and make their money selling solely on site, is a dis-service to those who are coming here for advise. There is half an hour between games, mites, midgets, peewee’s. Once a game is over almost everyone connected to that game is GONE. They’re either getting out of the rain, snow, cold, or going home to catch the rest of the NLF game that they’re missing. Wrestling on the other hand has a captive group of parents and kids. They’re going to be there for HOURS. They have tons of time to spend at viewing stations. On-site selling works great. At my last wrestling tournament we were selling 16x20’s on the spot. It worked great. But lets not kid ourselves, the web has a place in what we do as event shooters and photographers.
On our website we post 72 dpi images that produce a passable 2 inch print, assuming that you don’t mind having a diagonal watermark every ¼ inch. At 4x6 you’ll need to tape it to the frig and look at it from the living room. Are the people pinching the thumbnail my customers? No! They’re no more than the people who go back and snitch a second piece of sample deli cheese. My customers WANT prints. Will keeping someone from pinching a 300 pixel 72 dpi thumbnail make them want to buy a print? I doubt it. Four hours ago someone bought 12 5x7’s of the same kid going through windups on the mound, 3 from each windup. The game was 3 weeks ago! Guys (gals too) that one sale will cover my hosting fees for the month. They sure as heck weren’t going to make a dime burned on a dvd on my shelf.
What would make a great thread is a discussion of which events generate what kind of sales. That is information that we can use.
Cheerleading; everyone is there all day, plenty of time for the runners to move cards back and forth between the viewing area and the photographers. Plenty of time for the girls (and boys) to come look-see and mom to come buy between sessions. Wrestling ditto. Swim not so much on-site, because the athletes are wet, suited, and in the pool area for too long to come out to the sales areas. Youth football? You’ll make your money at the end of the season… on-line.
Doug, maybe the car dealership was a bad example, but the supermarket examples might be closer for you to consider. Larry in a targeted market where you’ve in essence made your sale before you get to the field, that works, but what do you do when you have 800 kids and 6 shooters? Or 1200 on 9 fields in 3 towns AT THE SAME TIME? You CAN’T possibly chase each player down with a laptop. And no we did't sell to all 800 families if we had I'd be writing this from the deck of my new 65' Vyking! But we did make the money we expected to.
It’s not an easy balance and there is no one answer. However I know that trying to apply just one answer IS wrong.
Happy shooting………………..
Eric
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
This country that most of us live in has changed and I’m afraid to say, not for the better. In today’s world, at least here in California, there is a very strong attitude of “I’m going to do whatever I want, whenever I want to, I don’t care who it inconveniences and if you don’t like it, too darned bad. I want it so therefore I will take it. What are you going to do about it?” If you have the temerity to actually do something about it, you get crapped on for being overly aggressive. Aaarrrgh!
While I agree with many of the comments made so far, it really does trouble me that our society, as well as us, view theft with so little concern. I understand that you face this as a necessary evil for being able to sell online, and that many of you HAVE to sell online, but stop and think about how much more money you could be making if you weren’t being ripped off so easily. There’s not much I can actually do about it other than police my little corner of the world but it still doesn’t make me happy.
In the cases I mentioned, if the young lady had said, “Oh, I didn’t know that!” I might have made an exception, since she was the last “customer” of the day, even though I am 99% certain that she would not have contacted us. It was her attitude that cranked my jaw full tight.
The guy with the Mustang…he flat out knows better and I’ve dealt with him before.
Today was the culmination of the first paragraph. Last week I was contacted about some images that we had from a recent event. The caller wanted to see some photos of his car but the caller was the Technical Editor of import car magazine and he wanted a photo to use in the magazine. Ok, this won’t be a club racer pricing. He expects the photo to be used as a page and a half in the magazine. Ok. I don’t want to charge more than the photo is worth but at the same time I ain’t gonna give it away. Looking at the pricing guides, the price for a page and a half is between $503 and $1,007. That’s quite a bit of difference. Looking at their circulation and ad rates, I quoted $600 plus $281 for ¼ page yearly web usage plus sales tax. The total was $958.09. I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of money for a photo, but they set the size usage and the web usage. I was more than willing to negotiate downward to a mutually advantageous price. Here’s the email I got back.
>Hi Norm, >I just received your invoice in the amount of $958.09 for the shot >of our Scion tC at the recent NASA HPDE track day. This amount greatly >exceeds what we can afford to pay for a single photo, as it is within >the range of what we pay for an entire day's shoot. Would you be open >to renegotiating?
At this point, this is what I was expecting. What follows wasn’t.
>Our absolute limit for a single photo like this would be $400.00, >tax and web usage included. In exchange for this reduced rate, we >would be more than happy to run your company's contact information and >potentially work together on future projects (as our guys go to the >track a lot.) If not, I am afraid we will not be able to do business. >Thank you for your time. > >Respectfully, > >XXX
I don’t know about you guys but I don’t see a lot to be negotiated here, do you? Either I take their $400 or it’s nothing. You can be sure that this deal fell through.
How does this relate to the previous messages? We have to march to the tune of our own drummers. Look around, see what others are doing, adopt if you see an advantage, innovate if you need to, understand what you are doing and need to do, but step proudly down your own path to success. Learn that following the herd is the surest way to find yourself at the bottom of a cliff with others falling on your head.
__________________ Norm Cabana
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White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Last edited by Norm_Cabana; 07-14-2006 at 09:15 PM.
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