For starters most parents have plenty of posed portraits of their children posing in their uniform is their pristine state. However, obtaining photos of their athlete in action is much more difficult. Unless that parent is lucky enough to have a newspaper photographer, yearbook photographer, or even a school staff with a camera on their athlete during their special moment, most parents will not have any stills to remember that magic moment by. Often times if parents have any photos of these moments its mearly a product of luck. This idea helps raise the odds of more coverage.
In this blog I will not only describe my proposal for a new service but also display some of my own work over the years. I hope that readers of this blog will take this idea to heart and consider this to help me expand this idea and network more photographers aboard.
My background starts out to my days a yearbook photographer at Midland Valley High School. Back at that time no other high school at least that I knew of had someone doing play-by-play stills at sporting events. Play-by-play allows photographers more opportunities to catch the magic moments as in sports obviously the best way is to always have the shutter clicking on every play. I'm pretty well convinced that to this day not many schools or athletic organizations have someone photographing. I want to change this.
Back in high school despite being under equipped I was known for pushing my non-DSLR camera to levels of quality not expected by many. I promptly earned awards and publishings for my work and as I moved on to college I obtained equipment upgrades. From there I was the photographer for USC Aiken Pacer Times, and later went on to have a two year stint in the now defunct Lifetouch Church Directories with some spot work in the School Division as well.
First topic is where would funding come from. Obviously sports action photography can be a risky and abusive prospect on equipment. Action photography racks up shutter counts on equipment and has many other risk of breaking equipment, not to mention action photographers are frequently at risk from ether unpredictable athletes movement or in game projectiles such as baseballs. Keep in mind any photographer in the field is consistently at risk of damaging equipment or getting hurt. Having a photographer at the event doesn't grantee all action will be caught but it increases the odds much more. Respectable compensation from tips and booster club funds could be used prior to hiring the photographer. Basically, the school or organization would call the photographer with an offer, they would say hi for $xxx would you be glad to show up to our game on xx-xx-xxxx. If travel and everything aligns then the photographer accepts the offer and puts the outing on their calendar.
Respectable compensation for the photographers is very paramount as good play-by-play photography requires a combination of quick whits, technical photography knowledge, a knowledge of the sport they are photographing that provides them the ability to operate their camera and predict in some cases what's fixing to happen on the play. To make things more interesting a play-by-play photographer adapts to any weather conditions, extreme heat, extreme cold, or even heavy precipitation.
The next subject is distribution after the outing. Just about any average outing from a play-by play sports outing can easily produce over 1,000 images. The editing process would be very timely and by my estimates when you do play-by-play only 4 out of every 10 images is quality.
Good distribution starts with word of mouth in this case I need the Press box staff and athletic staff informing students and parents alike I am doing an outing on that day. Weeks in advance would be best but can be applied in short periods as needed. I would need it to be well known to visit my Facebook page for Geolina Photography & Productions to view the raw upload.
Here a user can toggle the raw versions of the photos and click on and comment images they are interested in. Upon Facebook Notification the Photographer can then find the photo on the computer match, edit and send it to the user to print out or display any way they want. The process is very fast and easy. Having the full resolution digital image is a huge advantage over just having prints as with the digital footprint you can have it printed in any size you want at any time and a properly stored digital image can live on forever.
