jrowphoto
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Upload & Sell: Off
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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.
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