The Big Bad
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Okay well heres a few points, first and foremost, anyone with the attitude that consist of "well I know its bad, but as long as people buy it......" should not be in the profession.
yes people will often buy poor quality images but this really brings down the whole profession in my opinion. It supports the stereotype that pro photographers arent worth paying good money. Its an unfair generalization but one that seems to linger none the less. You pay someone good money to shoot a wedding for example, $2000 and the shots are horrible, the guest see the shots and agree they are horrible. Suddenly the opinion is that its a ripoff to pay a pro photog $2000 because the shots suck and you could have cousin Jim do it for free and get just as good of results.
What you want ideally is for everyone working in the business to deliver quality images in a professional manner. You want people to see the shots and say "wow" thats definatly worth $2000, we will definatly hire a pro for our wedding instead of using my cousin.
Second, the idea of putting shots "up there because you never know what someone will like" This is a bad idea on two counts. One, parents while not pro photographers still know good images vs bad images. As a whole consumers are getting alot wiser in terms of photography, they have point and shoots, they have home printers, they know what is to be expected. We live in a society that has us encountering thousands of images a day and as a result, we have gotten more picky.
also in regards to this, basically the sum of your work is as strong as the weakest part. If you have 20 bad images for every good image, just in case someone likes it, your overall work looks weak. If you have 30 great images from a game, it looks like your a real talent.
Third, Id afriad to say that your gear just isnt up to par for shooting sports. Your going to have a very very hard time producing good results and you wil have lots of frustartion from great moments missed because of your camera not being able to focus etc.
And last of all, and hopefully not too discouraging is this fact, pretty much every person on this forum basically seems to have a youth sports business. Every person who buys a halfway capable consumer body like a 20D gets the idea that they can sell sports, wedding, portrait or some other image.
Ive shot games before where there have been 3 or 4 different "youth sports photogs". All of them had some basic gear, business cards and a website. Know how many shots they sold ? Zero, know how many I sold ? Three and I shot for this school all the time and used a strobe system.
The market is so absurdly oversatured its not funny. By the time you finish reading this probably anohter person in your town just setup an account on printroom, shutterfly, photoreflect etc and is planning on showing up to games and expecting the money to come pouring in.
$20 for a 8x10, cost you $2, thats $18 each what a great profit right ? Yeah it is, but everyone else has realized this as well, and then theres the guy who says, we'll I'll sell for $10 and take everyones business, and then someone says I'll sell for $5 and then parents expect to pay only $5 and now your making $3 and its not worth your time.
So look, bottom line is this, go ahead and give it a try. Its a funny pursuit at any rate but if your expecting to make money on a regular basis, odds are it wont happen. Thats just the simple truth.
Its like opening a restauratn, sounds fun but its a ton of work and 90% odds are for you failing to stay in business for 3 years.
Again, Im just trying to tell you the truths about the business and things are only getting worse. I wish you the best, but before you sink any money into it, make sure you know what your getting into
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