I hope this is in the right forum. I'm a long time lurker, and have developed a great deal of respect for the people in this forum. I'm hoping I can reach out to everyone's expertise to get some input on something.

I'm looking to expand the way I do sales to go into some of the larger events. I'm currently doing development for shoot/view/sell workflow. Can any of you reccomend software product platforms for the viewing stations?

Right now my plan is to have 2-3 photographers shooting, running cards back where the garbage is discarded, and any minor (30 seconds or less) changes are made to images. Once published to the viewing stations people should be able to order onsite (preferably with the viewing station software), and I can then send them to lab to print & mail to them.

Any thoughts? Input? Suggestions? Thanks,
Nick

I've used Event Photo Systems, 5 Minute Photo and Photo Parata. Photo Parata was by far the best. We have used Parata with 32 viewing stations pushing 45,000 images in one day with 4 photographers. You can PM me for more details..

• Event Photo Systems was slow and buggy but offered the most features.
• 5 Minute photo works but the loader is buggy and slow as well. 5 Minute Photo also uses file sharing which requires Cal's for every connection and in XP is limited to 10 stations. The loader is amateurish compared to Photo Parata.
• Parata cart system is useless but not needed if your printing onsite. It uses apache so no Cal’s are required and runs extremely efficiently.

ProSelect by Time Exposure

Nick,

You're on the right path: R&D for your solution, as opposed to winging it after the fact!

What I preach is that your workflow has to exceed your customer flow. Meaning, that whatever workflow you have intended, you HAVE to have images available in your booth by the time customers show up. Then, within the booth, you need to have the hardware and efficiency to manage the customer with minimal staff.

What it comes down to is what type of events you're planning on covering. At my first show I planned on doing all that you are: download, review, chimp, maybe edit, then process to viewstations. After the first hour, with 200+ images coming in every 3-4 minutes, and customers in my booth within minutes of download, I realized my intentions were futile. While this workflow that Luke and I encounter isn't the norm for most events, you will find it MUCH easier to hire good photographers that do the chimping for you. IMHO, that is the way it HAS to be done: they know if they had a bad shot - the instant it was taken - so let (make) them take care of it. That frees up your booth people to do nothing more than download, process and help customers/take orders.

What software/hardware you use will be entirely up to your budget and what amount of time/staff you can commit to running it. And when you mention larger events, this becomes so much more critical. Again, depending on your customer flow, more viewstations will help sales (how much depends the efficiency of your customer interface.)

Unfortunately, I can't help too much in the software arena - we started off with our own custom software 8 years ago. It allows us to process (so far) up to 100,000 images per day from a dozen photographers with one click of the mouse. Within 35 seconds of that, images start showing up on the viewstations that customers can find their pix within 1-2 clicks. Then they can order, checkout on up to 100 viewstations and pay our cashier. I can run a show with 4 people (3 of them photographers and one cashier) for up to about 3500 competitors per day.

For me, its about time and money. I've spent the money to save the time - and it pays off in the long run to run shows on a thin staff since we travel nationwide.

(For CAL based software, one could look at Windows Web Server 200X for less than $400 - that offers unlimited CALs as long as the server role is nothing but that of a web server (serving clients: i.e. viewstations))

Hammy.

Hammy wrote:
Nick,

You're on the right path: R&D for your solution, as opposed to winging it after the fact!

What I preach is that your workflow has to exceed your customer flow. Meaning, that whatever workflow you have intended, you HAVE to have images available in your booth by the time customers show up. Then, within the booth, you need to have the hardware and efficiency to manage the customer with minimal staff.

What it comes down to is what type of events you're planning on covering. At my first show I planned on doing all that you are: download, review, chimp, maybe edit, then process to viewstations. After the first hour, with 200+ images coming in every 3-4 minutes, and customers in my booth within minutes of download, I realized my intentions were futile. While this workflow that Luke and I encounter isn't the norm for most events, you will find it MUCH easier to hire good photographers that do the chimping for you. IMHO, that is the way it HAS to be done: they know if they had a bad shot - the instant it was taken - so let (make) them take care of it. That frees up your booth people to do nothing more than download, process and help customers/take orders.

What software/hardware you use will be entirely up to your budget and what amount of time/staff you can commit to running it. And when you mention larger events, this becomes so much more critical. Again, depending on your customer flow, more viewstations will help sales (how much depends the efficiency of your customer interface.)

Unfortunately, I can't help too much in the software arena - we started off with our own custom software 8 years ago. It allows us to process (so far) up to 100,000 images per day from a dozen photographers with one click of the mouse. Within 35 seconds of that, images start showing up on the viewstations that customers can find their pix within 1-2 clicks. Then they can order, checkout on up to 100 viewstations and pay our cashier. I can run a show with 4 people (3 of them photographers and one cashier) for up to about 3500 competitors per day.

For me, its about time and money. I've spent the money to save the time - and it pays off in the long run to run shows on a thin staff since we travel nationwide.

(For CAL based software, one could look at Windows Web Server 200X for less than $400 - that offers unlimited CALs as long as the server role is nothing but that of a web server (serving clients: i.e. viewstations))

Hammy.

Time for a 2009 coat of paint on this...
... Hammy and Events

Wow! I appreciate all your great feedback! It's definately helped alot.

For better or worse most of the events I would be covering are smaller events, with about 125 atheletes and about 300-400 spectators tops for the time. That being said if this ends up becoming something really worth while I'd like whatever I set up to be flexible enough to handle growth.

I think (won't know until the first major mishap occurs I guess) I have a working system in mind and am starting to get it set up for the first events the end of this month. Now the only big question is if I do onsite printing or send to lab for print/pickup (next days event)/shipping. I really don't have the budget for Dye-Sub printers yet and I'm told inkjet is not a good option. Any input on that?

Thanks again
-Nick

Most of the Software companies allow you some time to play with their product. I know Time Exposure does. They will even extend the trial period up to 60 days total if I remember correctly. I like it because the app does the POS as well as the custom features the clint m,ay want like cropping or B&W or Sepia or this or that border. I would download them all and play with them some and see which you wish to try out on site and use your current system as a Backup.

Nick,

I've been using inkjet printers since I started 8 years ago. NEVER had a customer complain or even ask about it - they don't care - they are buying an image capture, not ink on paper.

My reasoning for inkjets was for initial cost, speed, redundancy and availablity of supplies. While dye-subs were available, they were quite expensive: $12,000 for an ML-500 which was about the only printer portable and could keep up with the 1000-3500 prints we'd do in a weekend. But I would never rely on a single piece of equipment, so I'd have to buy two - or more for multiple, simultaneous shows. Then supplies would be 'proprietary' - meaning I couldn't get extra ribbons and rolls of paper at Staples if I was in a pinch.

Inkjets solved all my problems, low cost (<$200) with supplies at any store with office equipment. And because I wanted redundancy anyway, running multiple inkjet printers allowed my speed to be faster than even the ML-500s.

But, after two years of printing at events, I had to suddenly stop as my main print person could not make it to a couple shows, so I did without for those shows. Turns out, sales was NO different than printing onsite. Yet what I realized was that I had less to take, less to setup, less to maintain, less people to pay, less meals, less hotels, less stress onsite. The downside would be having to print and ship everything when we get back to our office - but the printing can be done in just over a day for the largest show with only one staff person on equipment that doesn't move out of my office, and the shipping costs are there - but still quite a bit less than the cost of printing onsite. I've never looked back to printing onsite.

When we were designing our software, we thought about have the ability for our customer interface to allow the customer to crop/edit/etc their own pictures. Then we realized the training that would require extra staff as well as the station time that is so critical for us to manage up to 1000 people at our boot per hour. And in the thousands of prints that we've done, we've had to resend less than 5-6 prints because we cropped wrong.

Good luck!!
Hammy.

Hammy, ML-500 is the only Dye-sub that would keep up? Our Dr150's can print 5x7's in 13 seconds, you can find, crop and color balance your images under 13 seconds? I have yet to find anyone printing for us who complained our Shinko's or Dr150's are slowing them down... The DR150 is just getting warmed up at 1000 prints a weekend! The old ML-500's would be faster if customers ordered 30 copies of each print, but that isn't the business of Event Photographers and why the ML-500's are now just history.

Who cares if ink is available locally for inkjets?? I have yet to cover an event and thought thank god Staples is 3 miles away because we may not have enough ink to cover this event. The fact is when you are printing 1000 8x10's a day you want a printer that can keep up and not require new ink cartridges every 30 minutes. You want 300+ prints before refills. You want the refills to be one quick all in one dry process. You DON'T want to mess around with 7 messy ink cartriges running out at different times + paper. Besides what inkjet can't even come close to matching the speed of a Dye-sub? Nobody is going to argue that inkjets are not suitable for selling prints. They are simply not the tool for the job when it comes to Event Photography.

Cost of printing onsite.. Ok take 3500 prints a weekend and figure 3 prints per order.. 1166 orders multiplied by $2 between postage and the cost of your photo mailer. $2332 is your postage bill for this event. Personally I can easily staff two quality people to print for me for much less then $2332 a weekend.

The technology, cost and effort of printing onsite is not the issue. The issue is finding staff capable of doing the job well.

BTW, I feel we have had this convo before..

Luke,

Tell me how fast the DR150's were back in 2001 when I started business? (as the DR150s came out in 2005) (And I stopped printing onsite back in 2004.)

And when I did print onsite - to print 3500 prints, I had 13 printers pooled together which does beat any dye sub printer (groups of 3-4 per print server - each dedicated to different print sizes)

And yes, I did the math - when orders hit over 750 at a show, then it is cheaper to staff the event with printers instead of mailing. But about the same time we stopped printing, we went to offering images on CD. Now orders rarely get over 350 because groups of people order the team CD option - which accounts for 80% of my sales lately. Cost of getting gear and staff around all parts of the country for multiple simultaneous shows is way more than the cost of mailing for me.

So yes, dye subs have evolved into much better options if one chooses to print onsite. As far as printing onsite, been there, done that. My business just happened to evolve faster than printers have and I'm making more money now that when I was printing onsite.

(BTW - I'm sure we'll continue to have this discussion for quite some time! )

Hammy wrote: "When we were designing our software, we thought about have the ability for our customer interface to allow the customer to crop/edit/etc their own pictures. Then we realized the training that would require extra staff ..."


What about the standalone photo printing viewstations at Costco, Kinko's, drug stores, etc? These kiosks have software that allows the customer to proportionately crop, edit, convert to black and white or sepia, reduce red eye, and burn discs of just some or all of their pictures without any assistance or training at all.

I use the ones at my local Costco, and while there, I've seen other customers use them as well. None of us required any training. Nobody had any questions. The process was self explanatory, and the next step was self evident.

I've often wondered what company developed that interface, and if there is a non Costco version?

I think the issue with the photo printing viewstations is that if folks are going to be at the station for twice as long, you can only deal with half the number of people on a day when the stations are all busy at the times people can come look, or you need twice as many.

That goes for all sizes of operation, from big to small. (I'm small).

Merv.

P Alesse wrote:
Hammy wrote:
Nick,

You're on the right path: R&D for your solution, as opposed to winging it after the fact!

What I preach is that your workflow has to exceed your customer flow. Meaning, that whatever workflow you have intended, you HAVE to have images available in your booth by the time customers show up. Then, within the booth, you need to have the hardware and efficiency to manage the customer with minimal staff.

What it comes down to is what type of events you're planning on covering. At my first show I planned on doing all that you are: download, review, chimp, maybe edit, then process to viewstations. After the first hour, with 200+ images coming in every 3-4 minutes, and customers in my booth within minutes of download, I realized my intentions were futile. While this workflow that Luke and I encounter isn't the norm for most events, you will find it MUCH easier to hire good photographers that do the chimping for you. IMHO, that is the way it HAS to be done: they know if they had a bad shot - the instant it was taken - so let (make) them take care of it. That frees up your booth people to do nothing more than download, process and help customers/take orders.

What software/hardware you use will be entirely up to your budget and what amount of time/staff you can commit to running it. And when you mention larger events, this becomes so much more critical. Again, depending on your customer flow, more viewstations will help sales (how much depends the efficiency of your customer interface.)

Unfortunately, I can't help too much in the software arena - we started off with our own custom software 8 years ago. It allows us to process (so far) up to 100,000 images per day from a dozen photographers with one click of the mouse. Within 35 seconds of that, images start showing up on the viewstations that customers can find their pix within 1-2 clicks. Then they can order, checkout on up to 100 viewstations and pay our cashier. I can run a show with 4 people (3 of them photographers and one cashier) for up to about 3500 competitors per day.

For me, its about time and money. I've spent the money to save the time - and it pays off in the long run to run shows on a thin staff since we travel nationwide.

(For CAL based software, one could look at Windows Web Server 200X for less than $400 - that offers unlimited CALs as long as the server role is nothing but that of a web server (serving clients: i.e. viewstations))

Hammy.

Time for a 2009 coat of paint on this...
... Hammy and Events


hahaha paul

Focus Locus wrote: None of us required any training. Nobody had any questions. The process was self explanatory, and the next step was self evident.

Merv has actually answered most of this issue: time.

Given the two options:
- Buy
or
- crop, zoom, border, sepia, b/w, rotate, desaturate, neat image, etc..?? and then buy

Which would take longer?

And with up to 1000 customer at my booth per hour... with only 100 viewstations...


The other, not so obvious answer comes in the customer intent: A customer at my booth is there to buy action shots of their child. A customer walking up to the booth in Costco is there to print pictures. So there would be plenty of customers that wouldn't understand - therefore requiring more staff (and time)
I have plenty of customers with whom I explain that if they were to purchase what they have in their cart as images on CD, they could save money and print the 5x7's themselves. But they decline as they don't want to print the pictures, they'd rather have us do it for them (orders up to $850 worth of 5x7s)

So, for smaller shows with enough stations, and the right software, I'm sure it could be pulled off with no issues/worries. But the more options that are offered, the more likely it will require attention/assitance and certainly more time.

Time is the issue.

Biggest mistake I made when starting was offering memory mates with an action shot in the small spot, and a team photo in the large one, with the competitors name printed on it. The event was all girls, who, if involved in picking the photo doubles the time it takes to pick it. They always like different photos than their parents.

anyway, those bloody things kept our 2 computers 100% tied up all day as we helped them choose shots and produced these memory mates on-site. never again.

I still print on site, but no more memory mates - all vanilla shots from then on. Sure we'll crop and sharpen, but that's about it.

I print with a 10*8 sony die-sub (DR700) and a 6*8 sony die-sub (dr200), and thats good for me as these printers are easily as fast as 2 stations, and as this whole event photography is so new in Ireland, it's great for me to have customers walking around with shots and showing their friends. kind of free advertisments. I often do the first few prints for free if its slow starting off. (dog shows etc).

Merv.

I personally like walking away from a weekend knowing that 90% of our prints are delivered and the customers are happy. Money in our pockets and a smile on our customers face. I will admit however we are not printing 8x10's very much onsite anymore. 8x10's are not very popular and our 8x10 collages take to long. 95% of our paper sales will always be the cheapest product we sell. 5x7's. So that is what we focus on.

We have experimented not printing onsite and unlike Hammy's results we had less sales. From my experience the larger the event the more you can get away without printing onsite. The common response was "Oh, well I will just get them online then" and of course we never heard back from them. Also I agree with mervifwdc that our customers are one of our best sales tools. What do parents do when they get a great shot of their kid? They show all their friends... And then the friends come over too see if we got any good shots of their kid as well.

luketrot wrote:We have experimented not printing onsite and unlike Hammy's results we had less sales. From my experience the larger the event the more you can get away without printing onsite.


It sounds like size of event is a key factor in the to print or not to print question. And it sounds like Hammy's events are much larger Luketrot's, which may mean they are both "right," even when they disagree.

Focus Locus wrote:
luketrot wrote:We have experimented not printing onsite and unlike Hammy's results we had less sales. From my experience the larger the event the more you can get away without printing onsite.


It sounds like size of event is a key factor in the to print or not to print question. And it sounds like Hammy's events are much larger Luketrot's, which may mean they are both "right," even when they disagree.


FL... the debate between Hams and Lukes has been going on longer than Hatfield and McCoys and everytime the subject comes up, each have to put on a fresh coat of paint on their opinion. Personally, I love sitting back and just watching. Basically, it comes down to how each person decides to spend the time and the advantages/disadvantages of both systems. I have done it both ways too, and have seen no difference, so I'm in the no print camp, but I'm in a different sports market than these guys. Whatever works best for each is the right answer.

Focus Locus wrote:
luketrot wrote:We have experimented not printing onsite and unlike Hammy's results we had less sales. From my experience the larger the event the more you can get away without printing onsite.


It sounds like size of event is a key factor in the to print or not to print question. And it sounds like Hammy's events are much larger Luketrot's, which may mean they are both "right," even when they disagree.



Ah yes, Luke and I love to bicker about this - online and off.

But the reality is that I try to encourage Luke and others, because I've been there. I've done smaller shows - as little as 120 kids (in two gymnastics sessions - so its really like two 60 kid shows) and have done as good if not better with NOT printing onsite as when I did print onsite.

I think the biggest issue is in the perception of prints walking around. When/IF that is the ONLY form of marketing, then its a great idea - it probably helps a bit. It was certainly part of my business plan when I started.

I had one show - my smallest of my first year - where we did studio T&I and printed on site. One parent got a 12x18 of the team and held it up to other parents - which did boost the sales of that picture that others bought. But this only hits a TINY portion of potential customers. Most parents will keep their prints in the bag instead of passing them around and get fingerprints on them before framing. Again, though, if this the the ONLY marketing campaign, its better than nothing.

In successive years, I've turned to other marketing methods, and my sales (per head) have not changed. By implementing backlit screens, plasmas, projection slideshows, I have slideshows and prints that hit 100% of the potential customers. Now I am in control of blasting nearly LIVE images of every competitor to their parents - not waiting on Sally's mom to show Suzy's mom pix of Sally - when Suzy's mom wants to see pix of Suzy. The best part, is that these marketing tools consist of ONE fixed cost - not an ongoing one of staffing, setup, and transport each weekend.

It's not like Wal-Mart where if you see something in somebody elses cart, you say to yourself: "oh, I need that too". I don't go to McDonalds and look at what other people are eating and decide based on that. Customers wanting pix will be looking for a unique item. But come to think of it, I honestly can't think of a single business (store) that sales are a product of walking around displays. Clothing stores could have models walking around with the latest fashions, but they don't. Established companies like that rely on PRO-ACTIVE marketing - sticking ALL of the products in your face and highlighting the newly added ones.

Again, early on, my business model was limited to none on marketing - I wanted to be a full service shop where customers walked home with prints and they show their friends. Unexpectedly, I was forced into NOT offering that and found out that my sales are the same (if not better), my costs are less, and my profit is higher.

Ironically, when one scales to larger shows, it actually makes more sense to print onsite, because the sales numbers will justify the extra staff, gear, setup, etc... But scale differently to multiple shows, and now staffing gets harder. Even Luke is feeling the pinch of time spent printing onsite by not printing 8x10s because they take too long and backs up other orders. So what happens when a customer orders 50 5x7 prints? (I've had it happen) Does he tell that customer who placed the largest order that she'll have to wait - or her order will be mailed because it will take to long and back up all the other 1-2 5x7 orders? How does that customer feel when other spending $20 get their order and she has to wait? Scaling is a good thing - being able to handle it is better.

I'm not trying to change people's ways - there is no arguing that having prints done at the show is nice. Certainly for all the weekend warriors out there who have a day job also it offers more time on the weekdays. But there are still stragglers and web sales to contend with, so why not do it all in one place. I'm just offering advice from somebody who's been there and done all that. Somewhere along the way, I took out the 'pride and ego' part of my business plan and realized the core of profitability is controlling costs - not doing it because it can be done.

Think about it, for smaller shows, where making money is more questionable, its key to eliminate as many costs as possible. Once invested in other marketing tools that are more effective, then doing small shows are a piece of cake. I think most of us are in business to be successful - so why not start thinking on a grander scale and get there quicker instead of mulling around and waiting for it to happen. Yes, we all have to start somewhere, but I've never seen a Wal-Mart or McDonalds (or any good business) start off as a road-side vendor.

Yet we as photographers have not problem spending whatever budget on the greatest gear available. Not to dispute that - it helps (usually), but to sell images, that's a whole avenue of different thinking that most of us would like to avoid as we don't have business degrees. Taking great shots (making a great product) is certainly the core of what we do, but marketing the images is so much more part of the picture that most of us imaging (pun intended, and I'm still learning and yearning).

Hammy

write a book

ill buy it