Ah, you brought up the other thing I didn't like about them. When you upload images to them you are for all practical purposes also giving them an unrestricted use license. As you noted, whereas they "offer more media use of images" yet the photographers only get paid for print sales made to parents.

jaybean wrote:
Ah, you brought up the other thing I didn't like about them. When you upload images to them you are for all practical purposes also giving them an unrestricted use license. As you noted, whereas they "offer more media use of images" yet the photographers only get paid for print sales made to parents.



Maybe the terms have changed since I've been shooting for them, but that's not the way I read the Agreement...

http://www.maxpreps.com/FanPages/photos.mxp
http://www.maxpreps.com/FanPages/photosScheduleA.mxp

Standard Print and Digital Photographic Usages
Standard Royalty Compensation. Upon the sale and delivery of photographic prints and/or digital files to consumers, Member shall earn a royalty of eighty (80) percent of the net proceeds.


Commercial Photographic Usages
Commercial Image Royalty Compensation. Upon the sale and delivery of digital images to commercial consumers, Member shall earn a royalty of fifty (50) percent of the net proceeds. Net proceeds are defined as the total sale price of the license, minus the cost of delivery, order processing and marketing.


Of course, if they decide to let another media source use the image for $0, then 50% of 0 is also 0.

That is incorrect. Any time they sell an image, whether it be to a parent or a newspaper or a website, you get money. Some items, like SI pictures, you need to invoice them, but that is no big deal.

Let me say this too...Any image I have sent to them that they have used on pages other than the team page or galleries, I have been paid for (that means front page, feature in site, or state page). If the photo goes to parent site CBS Sports, I get paid, SI.com, USAToday, ESPN, wherever they send it, I get paid.

Here's the clause which let's them get around royalties, including allowing them to provide photos to the state high school publications (which may also be some of our direct customers) without any royalty:
Use of Photos for Promotions, Web Site Display.
Member grants MaxPreps a perpetual, non-exclusive and worldwide license for use of images in promotions and display for MaxPreps. This licensed use of images is granted by Member to MaxPreps to inform the public about high school sports, to assist with advertising and promotion in order to publicize MaxPreps to the public, and to enhance the appearance of MaxPreps� Web site and its publications, advertising and promotional materials. MaxPreps is also authorized by Member to provide a sub-license for the display of photographs by official high school sports governing bodies in connection with their publications.

Carl Auer wrote:
So, if SI or another media entity asks for a image of a specific player, they want to send them the best possible image because you never know how big it will be, or what the use will be. So better to be safe than sorry.

I have no dog in this fight - it's their playground, they get to set the rules.

I did want to respond to the snippet above however -

David Bergman had an ambient ISO 3200 shot grace the front cover of SI, and it was a vertical crop from a horizontal frame. http://www.davidbergman.net/blog/2008/09/03/no-sports-illustrated-cover-jinx-for-me/


Rather than say it's better to be safe than sorry - I would say it's better to have an image (even if it's high ISO) than no image.

That said, I'm curious about the notation on their membership agreement page that says the image must be shot jpeg large-fine. Do they actually require the image to be captured that way, or to be processed and saved at that resolution. If the former, I would be curious why they would care if it was captured as a Jpeg or as a RAW and processed to a jpeg.

In the days of the 1D, I would agree that anything above ISO 400 started to degrade, but in this day and age with the D3 producing such amazing stuff at 3200, you'd think they'd aquiesce and change their requirements for flash above 400

Hah, It is funny you mention David Bergman shooting at 3200 on his D3. I may have misspoke/mistyped. They require the strobes/flashes for the sales to parents side. They want little to no noise in these images. While todays cameras, the D300, D3 D3X and 1DMk III, IV, and 7D have great high ISO handling, not all of their shooters use the brand new gear. Plus in your example, I would love to shoot a high school game at 3200 ISO in a NCAA stadium. Every football field I have gone to has horrible lighting and even at 3200 ISO, it is just not enough. With good stadium lighting (NCAA may have a tv contract and will light the field much more even than a typical high school stadium), correct exposure, and a fantastic camera like the D3, yes, those images may slip past the quality control of MaxPreps. But all stadiums are not lit the same.

I actually traded my 20D to David Bergman for his 1D (Was going to give his brother in law the 1D to learn how to take pictures on, then decided a 20D would be easier for him to use at the same time I was looking to trade). Still have it in my camera bag as a back up. Anyway, when I shot the Alaska State Football Championship game, it started in sun and went to dark. I would normally have shot at ISO 400 until my shutterspeed hit to slow a point to freeze action, then pull out the vivitars and go to work with those, but, because I was not shooting for sales, but contracted by MaxPreps for editorial coverage of the game, I was able to just bump up the ISO. I think I ended up shooting the last quarter at ISO 1600. If I was shooting to put into a gallery, absolutely no way I would have not shot without a flash. But since we were not selling the photos to parents, I was free to do whatever I wanted. But I also let them know that the shots would not be flashed. I have had basketball shots used in ESPN the magazine that had close to 75% of the original image cropped out, and the remaining image blown up quite a bit. These shots have been from a NCAA preseason televised tournament, shot at ISO 800 unstrobed, If it would have been a typical high school gym, ambient would have been ISO 3200 and blowing up a image cropped like that would be unacceptable. So, because even MaxPreps does not know what the use may be, by offering lower ISO images, allowing clients to crop and enlarge and still have a great image, they have a better chance of getting these images out to places like SI. On the Bergman cover, he was shooting for SI, and I know a few SI shooters that always go into the game with check lists. They typically have images they are asked to get, specific players, or a play, or a overall shot. Once they get the required shots out of the way, every single one of them is shooting in hopes of a cover or a leading off photo. When a photo editor goes to Icon, Getty, Corbis, Wireimage, Maxpreps, they are looking for an image that will work for what they want. So if there are two images that they find, one shot at ISO 3200 on a MKII of exactly what they are looking for, or a ISO 200 strobed shot from a classic 1D of almost the same shot, but not quite as good (missed the peak moment), you can bet that if they are planning on cropping or blowing it up, the strobed shot will win out.

Another thing to remember is that the MaxPreps quality/strobe guidelines will probably change in the future. These were written in the 1D classic/MkII and D2H/D2X era when high ISO was not the best. Once more and more of their shooters start shooting less with the older cameras, the strobing issue will more than likely change.

Seems to me that a few people are making assumptions and especially the people that haven't shot for them. A lot of misinformation as well, imho... I just started shooting for them this year, and was recruited by one of their photo managers out of Texas (I'm in the Chicago/Milwaukee area). He came across my site, and liked my photos and asked if I'd be interested, so I started shooting for them. They hardly have any photography presence in IL, other than downstate, so I'm the only one posting galleries from the Chicago metro area of 10 million people. They aren't as well known here but a lot of people I talk with DO know them from looking at stats, rankings, articles... They are growing nationally from CA, and have a large presence in TX, and are now the official photographers in CA, NY, and NC for state championships. Besides now being part of CBS Sports, they have signed an agreement to provide HS content for SI (and specifically the "faces in the crowd" column). They just sent a notice that this last month was the most traffic ever on the site and have now had 3.9 million unique visitors... To me, that sounds like a pretty decent audience to market to.

They aren't some "conspiracy", but I think some people just like to look for things like that. All shooting is on spec, and you aren't assigned to shoot anything. If they do ask you to cover a particular event, they pay you for that, but 99% of it is shoot what you want. It's simply another outlet to sell photos (and a better outlet than my own site apparently, because I've sold more via MP this fall than my own site, without doing ANY marketing for MP). I received my first check in October (for all sales in September), and they pay on time, and accurately. I generally don't market myself much or hand out business cards and the like too often, so I've made sales via MP that would have never heard of me or come across my photos otherwise.

Regarding quality, what's wrong with having strict or more demanding standards?? Isn't that a good thing?? There's enough crappy photos floating around already from the 10 soccer moms with a Canon Rebel providing the "official" photos on the school/team websites, and giving those away free.

Also, there is no "you can't shoot above ISO 800" rule. What they want are well-exposed, low noise, non-blurry shots with good color that will make nice prints. They want consistency in the photos on their website from photographer to photographer, and for the most part they do achieve that. It's hard to shoot night with flash, and due to recycle times, you can't just blast away at 9 FPS and hope for the 1 or 2 good shots. You have to wait, anticipate, etc. (which usually means the ref's white butt will cross right in front of me as I press the shutter! hehe). I've shot about 5 night games this way, and I don't get many great action shots (a lot of the pre and post play stuff generally), so I've shot a local Saturday day game each week as well to get some more/better action.

I shot a night playoff game in Wisconsin just last week at a school that had relatively good lighting for HS, so other than a handful of shots, I shot ambient light. With my Nikon D700, I shot at ISO 2500, f2.8, and 1/500th, and that gallery was accepted by MaxPreps. I had two submitted photos out of ~120 removed by the editor (with his crtique/notes available for me to read), for being too dark, which was fine, and they were... near the endzone, with no lights hitting the front of the player. I've never had more than 1 or 2 photos rejected per gallery submission (~70-100 shots for a night game, and 200-275 for day games). Personally, I like having an editor look at my pictures and give me feedback, because it makes me better, and the only person that does that otherwise is my wife or my family (and that's not really a critique is it... everything is "great"! )

As far as "being a pain" with their cropping guidelines, it really isn't. I already crop when I post to my own website, so rather than trying to decide 4x6 or 5x7 for this shot or that shot, I started using their cropping guidelines for all of my photos. I shoot RAW, process in lightroom, crop, and then upload the photos to my personal website galleries (the sales part of my website is through smugmug). After I've uploaded all of my photos to my personal site, I simply re-export them to a folder at 1600 on the short side. Copy the folder to MaxPreps, and I'm done. No additional hassle really.

This isn't my full-time job, and I'm not making a living at this, and neither would anyone else I suspect... But that doesn't make them "evil", or out to "rip us off"... Simply another outlet for our work, and maybe it generates some revenue that wouldn't normally come your way. Nothing wrong with that. I suppose it's dependent on how well you market yourself, and even then it's sometimes hit and miss. I've sold $100s of dollars from shooting events I didn't have expectations from (i.e. children's choir holiday concert), and sold little from things I thought would sell (weekend hockey tournament)...

MaxPreps has been a really good partner for me so far, and I don't have anything bad to say about any of their practices, communication, etc. They've been very professional and timely at every step of the way.

jrowphoto,
I would have to +1 to everything thing mentioned in the above post. Our workflow/experince with MP is very similar other than I have not been loading them to my personal site, just havent done it yet is the only reason.

Jeff

jrowphoto wrote:
...With my Nikon D700, I shot at ISO 2500, f2.8, and 1/500th, and that gallery was accepted by MaxPreps...


I had a gallery accepted that was shot at ISO1250 with a body that syncs at 1/500, an f/2.0 lens, and a little fill flash to "clean" the image a bit. Said differently, the flash provides "good" light which mitigates the high ISO noise thing.

Another maxpreps post, geez lol

If you don't like them or their rules, then go somewhere else. It is what they want, it is their business so let it be.

I have shot for maxpreps going on 3 years now. I don't mind the little extra work involved at all.

The cropping is very very easy in LR. Just set a custom crop at 21.6x16 and when you export put 2166 in both boxes and you will get the proper dimensions.

Another nice thing about maxpreps, you can still sell the images on your site from the minute you get home.

+1 to jrowphoto's post.

msauk wrote:
Another maxpreps post, geez lol


No, the same one. Woken from the dead from the summer.

P Alesse wrote:
msauk wrote:
Another maxpreps post, geez lol


No, the same one. Woken from the dead from the summer.



oh well that makes it a little bit better