Sportive photography. Is it too expensive?

craker

I love some of the photos from this years Tour of the Black Mountains. I've no idea whether the photographers enjoyed it, but thanks for being there.

I wonder if the business model is wrong. They want £14 for a framed print for example, 9 for a digital download and 7 for a 5 x 7. Now I've never paid for event photos but it strikes me they might shift a few more if they changed the price of a digital download to, say, £5 or even less. If you can sell double the units at half the price then it might make business sense.

I wont buy at £9 but would consider it at £5. How about £5 for 10 digital photos, they definitely get my cash and probably everyone else who did the ride.

What do you think business types and photography types?

Philip Whiteman

The whole sportive enterprise is over-priced I am afraid. Sadly, many of their photographers are not that great either.

At an audax run by a club mate, we have a professional photographer who volunteers for the event and he charges only £3 per print.

oldwelshman

There are many people who will not pay the amount they charge so they have nothing to loose reducing the price.

pneumatic

Expensive, yes. too expensive depends on the value you put on the image.

I have bought three professional photos of me on the bike: Alpe D Huez, Ventoux and me cornering on the Etape Caledonia apparently leaving other rides in my wake.

I cannot now remember what I paid for them, but I am very proud to have them.

On the other hand, I have spurned dozens of dull images of me wheezing along looking like a pudding on a paperclip and wouldn't have downloaded them for free.

Good photography is an art and the good artist deserves a reward.

IMHO!

David-Witts

As normal volunteers don't charge for their time (ie the big society) but you'd expect professional results from a professional photographer that needs to make a living. So expensive? Its all relative, if everyone purchased a photo then they could charge less. I've been quite happy with the photos that I purchased from sportives.

TheStone

£9 doesn't sound too bad for a download, but maybe they'd make more money if they dropped it to £5.

I just spent 22 EUR on one Marmotte download, which is f-ing ridiculous, but a very good photo (except I'm in it) and felt I had to get one. I'm sure if they were £5-8 each, I might have spent more money buying all of them.

Zoomer37

Pains me to say this as im into photography and fully appreciate how hard it is to make a good living from it, but the standard of work some of these photographers are putting out is very poor and not worth the money.

Standing in the same spot firing off numerous unimaginative shots of riders going by then taking them straight off the camera and charging what they do is ridiculous.

UK sportives for example are not going to have the moments to capture like the TDF, but surely these 'sports photographers' can come up with something a little bit better than a super close up shot of yourself looking like you just sh*t yourself in a sauna

TheStone

Phil O Connor seems to be out all day long at some of these sportives, with just a few hundred riders. It can't pay.

I always think they should just take one good pic on the first hill, then go home for the day.

craker

From a technical point of view, they're using some nice lenses with low f-stops so that the rider is crisply in focus and the hills and other riders dissolved into a blur. I think I'd like a go at opening up the f-stop a bit to get more of the background detail in.

We've got an F1.4 lens for our Canon - brilliant quality photos but after a couple of years of having it we've noticed that all our photos are taken at F1.4 with super sharp focussing. Its nice but can be overused.

polocini

I organise sportives and one of the first things I looked at was Photography as I thought it was too expensive. I decided to offer free pics that I would post online for anyone to download. I enlisted a friend to do the pics who is a great photographer.

Even though she is a friend I still paid as Polocini is run as a business.

First of all there is the logistics. She had to be on site early to get the HQ and start shots and then head out sharpish to find a good spot. We had more than one route so she had to move around. So there are logisitics of parking, fuel, weather etc.

Then on the night after the event the emails started. 'When are the pics going up etc?' We had been at the event all day and just wanted a rest. The pics went up the next day and then more emails came. 'Can you put them in numerical order'. So we started to sort through some 500 pictures. Then came more emails. 'You missed me' or 'please take my pic down as I'm walking' etc etc

For my second event I enlisted a pro photographer. I still have my in house pics of the event HQ etc but there is a lot of work involved in doing photos.

The guy I use charges very reasonable prices. He has to drive to the HQ early, hit the road, venture back to the HQ and then get home to sort the pics and get them online the same day. He also does a recce in advance to pick the best photo spots. To make that pay you have to sell a lot of pics at his prices.

There are a lot of threads on forums at the moment about sportive costs. Personally I can be bold enough to state that mine are THE best value in the uk. But a lot of people seem to think sportive organisers are raking in cash. There is a serious amount of leg work going in to each aspect of the event.

Anyway, ramble over.
AL

rolf_f

SportSunday charged me £2.50 for one image. Another, prob same as OP, wanted about £9 for one or about £27 for the whole set. I wouldn't hesitate at £2.50 - at £9 I'm still dithering a year later I think £7.00 was the price for a crappy resolution digital download. Ultimately, the only deal that seemed not completely crap was the whole set but I didn't want to double the cost of the sportive!!

Ultimately, once the photographer has got home and uploaded the photos, pretty much all of the costs are gone. So, whilst twice as many people buying half as expensive images is more bother, anything more than that implies that half price = more income.

Dunno whether they still do it but earlier this year they were photographing on an Evans Sportive I did. The pictures for that were all free. And the event was only about £13.

rolf_f

Polocini wrote:

He also does a recce in advance to pick the best photo spots.

He probably doesn't have to. Most photographers seem to just find somewhere at the top of one of the key climbs (and those have all been done before). You can work that out using Google street view and just make sure you are early enough for plan B if there is something wrong with the chosen location.

polocini

Rolf- That is why he is a professional photographer. He cares about what he does and finds the best spot. I suppose it involves the light etc as well. A good pic doesn't have to be a hill.

With regards the Evans events. They are being financed by one of the biggest cycling brands in the uk. Hence the costs. It doesn't stand up next to your average sportive.

AL

plowmar

I've only ever had one photo taken on a sportive, by a photographer purporting to come from Australia.

To de honest if he'd charged twopence it would have been too much as the only things in focus were the trees in the background. Never again.

Bobbinogs

Then came more emails. [...] 'please take my pic down as I'm walking'

Heh heh heh, the walk of shame captured for posterity. One for the grandchildren (or your customers at the dentist's ).

CycleSportPhotos.com

I am the above mentioned photographer who works with Polocini. I felt a wee bit compelled to write and explain some of the background stuff which goes into this line of work. Its not quite as simple as standing on the first hill taking a load of shots then going home and watching the cash roll in.
I only cover the Polocini Events because as a rider I believe they offer THE best value for money and Charity Sportives. The reason I do Charity Rides / Sportives is because I give 25% of photo sales profit back to the charities which I like to help as much as I can.
I also write sportive reports and supply pictures for Cycling magazines. This year I will be covering about 30 events and have so far filled about 40 print pages for the magazines. During the off season I get to take photos at the Revolution Series on the track and I get to as many races as I can. I started riding / racing with a cycling club when i was 11 years old and i've been involved in Cycling either racing when younger, for work and fun ever since. I got into taking cycling photos from working as a Portrait Photographer. There are a lot of costs involved, Insurance (public liability, equipment, income) Web Site, software, fuel, print, post. camera equipment (pro camera full set up approx 8k). Its also time consuming, after 8 or 12 hours travelling & taking pics, theres at least 4/5 hours reducing thumbnails and uploading. I love doing it, I'll never be rich - but I get to help some great charities and just about make a living, cheers! Rick

PS I try to do recce rides for courses i don't know. But thats just an excuse for a ride really, probably helps a bit though.

For the record, I charge £6 for a full size email or £15 for all pics of rider on a disc (usually between 3 and 9 pics including atleast 1 landscape), £10 for a 12x8 print including 2 6x4's inc post from a proper print lab' NOT a home inkjet.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickrobson/ http://www.cyclesportphotos.com/

wiffachip

paid £175 quid yesterday for a couple of snaps at my daughter's graduation

now that is expensive

Jon8a

I'd buy "facebook" qualtiy photos for a couple of quid but not that interested in average photo prints for £10.

richard205

Good post Rick,

I think a lot of people don't take into account the difference between taking a couple of photos and putting it up on a website, to taking over a thousand images and then sifting through them, editing if required, backing up and storage and then the logistics in actually fulfilling the transaction.

I've done event photography and weddings, slightly different disciplines but both have similar logistical requirements.

Rick has already highlighted the costs involved, but remember in most cases for a professional photographer some of the costs are doubled. i.e. I'd not go to a wedding with just 1 camera and a selection of lenses. That requires at least 2 cameras plus lenses, memory cards, spare batteries etc.

The same approach would need to be taken for event photography, no good having a camera break down half way through the day, or slipping over and the camera and lens goes to its death on the floor. That wouldn't be professional approach and any photographer going out there without more than one body shouldn't consider themselves a professional IMO for that very reason.

To put it into another perspective, you wouldn't be a professional cyclist on an event with just one bike, no spare wheels or support cars.

9 quid for an image is a fair whack though and i'd be put of unless it was very well composed, focused and included the full uncompressed raw or Tiff file. Though then you'd be looking at potentially huge on-line storage costs.

chrishd883

As a cyclist I think these pictures are expensive...
but as a photogrpaher I would argue the opposite.

At the end of the day I've never bought a photo.

But...if it was a really great shot (i.e. I happened to look good ofr once!) then..?!?!?!
Especially if I was on one of the famous alpine climbs

derek48

After you've done a few sportives, the pictures tend to look a bit 'samey', mainly three quarters, head on, especially if you're wearing the same kit, However, I have bought a couple from the Tour of the Black Mountains, where the shot is from the side on a particularly steep hairpin, with everyone out of the saddle. Really shows what it was like.
Some more imaginative photo angles would encourage me to buy more, but I know that you have to see the numbers to identify the riders. How did they do that on the TOBM?

nferrar

I agree they're too pricey, at least for the digital download options. Although I'd also agree the photographers aren't making a fortune. I think a lot of the problem is the generally average pictures, not because the photographers aren't any good but because they have to take hundreds/thousands over a few hours and simply don't have time to set up more arty shots let alone do image editing afterwards (where a lot of the 'art' in modern photography comes from).

So what's left is a sterile image of someone riding a bike, not something many people over the age of 10 want to put on their wall, let alone pay for. The closest I've come to buying one is on the Dragon ride when there was someone taking pics on a fast descent, at least it looked pretty dynamic, ultimately though it was still not something I'd want to display. The TotBM photos were very sterile IMO, all at the tops of climbs, the landscape was stunning though - sadly the pictures would have been better without the cyclists in them

vorsprung

For the last Paris-Brest-Paris 1200km all riders who might want to be photographed were issued with extra bike frame numbers to make it easier to identify them. On the course there were photographers in groups of 2 or 3 on several of the stages.

I paid istr 9 euros for a set of about 5 photos at various stages of the event. I was given them on a CD, I guess next PBP they will be a download

The event organisers also made a website with unofficial photos and got someone to identify all the frame numbers in them and sort them. All this came online months and months after the event but it was great to see a few unexpected photos of the event

springtide9

Think they are too expensive. If they made it cheap enough you wouldn't think twice - and I'm sure more people would buy..

This was the best of the bunch - which would have been pretty dull without the rain. Obviously purchased it (for some reason)... and had to do a bit of editing to make the most of it...



Can't say I'll be looking forward to purchasing any more photos.

edit.. the original...

David-Witts

to CycleSportPhotos.com and Polocini I agree with your comments. The large Sportive organisers backed by a "Shop" run sportives for advertising their business hence their price is low, Many good local cycling events are only run by the help of volunteers or their overheads are extremely low. Everyone wants a bargain but only the quality events will remain, hence why I will pay for a quality photograph.

rolf_f

Polocini wrote:

Rolf- That is why he is a professional photographer. He cares about what he does and finds the best spot. I suppose it involves the light etc as well. A good pic doesn't have to be a hill.

I can only speak from my experience - the photos I've found of me on Sportives have mostly (but not always) been technically competent but nothing better than I could do myself. Personally, I think photography is over-rated as an art. Most photographers seem to just click the shutter and the result is OK. I'd not violently object to a fiver for a full resolution image but any more, whether the photographer feels it is justified or not, is likely to see sales plummet.

As for the Evans thing - the ride I went on one of the staff bobbed out and took the pictures. He wasn't a professional photographer but, aside from the image resolution being lower (but plenty enough for a decent sized print if you want), the results are indistinguishable in quality from the professional ones.

Maybe the economics of the Sportive simply don't work for Pro photographers.