I shot my first large scale (125) kids team and individuals today. It was a ton of work and I had some great help. Since this was my first go at it, I'll take all the suggestions and critiques you want to offer up. I've got another one next week so will be able to incorporate any help.
I practiced a couple of times in my basement before taking the show on the road. I definitely learned a few things during the course of the 11 hour shoot today.
We had a great buy rate but I should say that we ended up being very efficient and had lots of down time between teams. We were complimented that there was very little waiting around. So while I was there all day, the actual shooting time was less.
Mark, a lot of the kids ended up buying large 8x10 or 11x14 individual prints so we could offer landscape to them. Memory mates were individuals in portrait orientation and a team shot like you are probably used to seeing, although i do design my own.
Wow!!! 11 hours? Your work is excellent. As a T&I shooter here in NorCal, I'd be interested in your shoot day workflow and marketing. Did you post on line for the customers to decide which shots they liked or did their parents make the call and order as you took the shots? Do you offer composite posters as one of your photo day products?
The buying potiential for a comp cheer team is great. we shot a similar sized group last winter in a third of the time. I don't think our shoot and yours' would be comparing apples to apples.... That's why I'm interested.....
These look great Tim and thanks for the link to a great read. I wanted to also ask did you set this up at the gym or was it at your studio? If at the gym how long did it take to set up?
Good Stuff Tim, did you have a trailer you hauled all of that in. I do some T&I as well and really pack my Explorer full to get on site. But have no room for the tile floor.
Looks great Tim!! You really nailed your lighting and exposure with these. Did you take any vertical shots similar to your first images here with the girls on their belly?
Thanks all. I will try to answer all of your questions.
Ralph-Well, as I clarified, we did get almost every team done much sooner than we originally planned, so actual shooting time was less than 11 hours, but we were there for close to 12 hours 8am to 8pm. I am fortunate that the community park I shoot for is where my kids played and a lot of parents knew my work and were glad I was doing there photos, so my marketing was a not much for this particular shoot. The league does the marketing I guess, by advising the teams of the date, their shoot time, etc. I put out a price list in advance so they all had that before coming and most came prepared. Since things were really moving smoothly with acceptance of payment and selection of packages, I could somewhat quickly shoot a few poses and let the parent (mom-sometimes the child) pick the image. I did offer a template type team composite that the teams will put in the youth homecoming program and most teams bought that. I use Lumapix to create the template and from there it is pretty quick to add the girls name and other text. As for work flow, we had one guy (another capable shooter-but a Nikon guy- ) taking the orders, handling upsale type questions, another guy (another Canon shooter) lining the girls up and sending to me, telling me what I needed pose-wise and then recording chosen image file numbers on their order form. Hope that helps, if not let me know
Jeff-it was set up in a room in a smallish community park building, but plenty of room for tables, and photo area as well as a staging area. Setup was about 45-it was our first time doing it like this and I'm sure we will cut a few minutes next time out.
Matt-We hauled the stuff mostly in the back of one of my partner's truck and some in the back of mine. We probably could have fit it all in one. Oh-both trucks are 4-door type, so room inside for the expensive stuff and room in the back for the flooring.
Madmat-no, not really, but many were shoot loose enough that I might be able to crop it vertically, but have not played with that idea. I'll look at it.
Oh, one more thing. I did shoot some early in the day with an eye-fi card early connected to my laptop and put a few of the better images from the day up so parents could see some of the better shots and see what we were getting. I think that really sold some on what we were trying to do as some expressed skepticism at the white backgrounds and lack of props.
My thoughts too Tim. If I were to shoot with a white background, parents would begin to wonder what was going on. Great idea to post some of the images. Especially so that the parents could see the reflection that you were getting.
Would the white floor work with a gelled background creating a gradiant effect? Could you use a background that has mostly white in it and some type of pattern to it and make the white background sort of fade into the background. Just some thoughts.
) taking the orders, handling upsale type questions, another guy (another Canon shooter) lining the girls up and sending to me, telling me what I needed pose-wise and then recording chosen image file numbers on their order form. Hope that helps, if not let me know