Track Day Photo Purchases
 

Hi,
I'm thinking about expanding my freelance motorsports photography buisiness.
Just trying to get a general concensus from you guys that race your cars in local club and regional road racing events.
If made available, would you be interested in purchasing high quality photographs of on-track action shots of your car?
I would make the photographs available for purchase via my website.
Thanks in advance for your input.
Silverbird :thumbs:

you will find most organizations already have agreements in place with photographers, I know the few tracks I go to all have it in place. People will buy photos so it could add to your existing business but photography is pretty competitive as you may know. :thumbs:

Every hpde I've been to has had a photographer selling hi res photos.

It seems that for $18.00 you get 1 6x8 shot. Expensive.

A CD of all the shots for the day will run you around $60 at Hallett. Some of my CDs will have 40 or more shots from the day.

Since you're local, I'll throw this out for you. We have a guy who comes to our 3BallsRacing events at GingerMan, Grattan, and MidO. For $30 you get a CD with all of the pics of your car that he shoots for the weekend. No touchups, no editing, but you usually have the disc in hand before you leave for the day.

You can get an idea of the quality of his photos from this Picasa album. http://goo.gl/Yjvka The on-track pictures are the ones that he took.

Problems I have run into with buying pics in the past;

not interesting, very few shots for the money, not very creative in picking good locations around the track, etc.....

The best pictures were gotten from a fellow at VIR charging only $50 for a CD. He had lots of shots, good locations, and was really good showing action on the car. The uphill esses shot at VIR is in my 'track pics' album and is my favorite. Shows air under both right side tires. I buy from this guy whenever I can.

If you do this, you have to really get a lot of shots of ALL cars, forget the extra expense of pics on cups, shirts and such. Just a loaded CD with good shots for a reasonable price will build repeat business.

Thanks for the input.
I'm still trying to sort out whether or not my buisiness plan would work. I'm curious in finding out if there would be a market in purchasing one or two high quality prints from an event or are most people interested in puchasing a large number of snapshots on a CD?
As opposed to offering a huge number of un-edited shots on a CD, I would offer high quality prints that can be ordered directly from my website. If you don't like my work, there is no obligation to buy my photographs.
I've shot motorsports since the 1980's. I know it is a VERY competitive field. What I try to capture is the speed, motion and beauty of the vehicle(s) that I'm photographing. Early on, I learned to avoid shooting frozen looking cars that appear parked on a track with boring/in-focus backgrounds. Magazine Editors and Art Directors would never buy those types of shots. Wondering if there was a market for quality photographs in the private sector.
Thanks again for the input!
Silverbird :thumbs:
Here are some examples of my work (low-res version).
Enjoy!

Your work is awesome. If you were at my track events and shooting photos like that, there would be a market.

Those are some really nice shots.

In general, what I've noticed is that the pics sell better to those who are in the beginner group and have just started their on-track experience, or just who don't make it out to the track that often. The "regulars" don't seem to care as much.

"In general, what I've noticed is that the pics sell better to those who are in the beginner group and have just started their on-track experience, or just who don't make it out to the track that often. The "regulars" don't seem to care as much."

Great piece of information!
Thanks.
Silverbird :thumbs:

:iagree: And, although your work is high quality, most beginners spend quite a bit of money to get to the event. I doubt they are of the mindset to spend another couple of hundred. The regulars have already spent all the money they have on upgrades to the vehicles!:lol:

You may have to approach it in the manner that aviation photographers work. They take the high quality shot of structures on the ground, make really nice large prints and then take them to the individuals or businesses and see if they are interested in buying. Too many people have been burned by low quality, high priced CD's.

So, in this vain, perhaps you might get a driver's email at the event with no obligation to them and then send them an email with a sample shot to see if they want to purchase.

Actually, that is how I got the picture in my avatar. I was running Deal's Gap a few years back and someone on the BMW forum asked if this was a member of the forum. He got the shot from Killboy. I saw it, recognized it and bought the CD.

Awesome pics... that Mladin shot is just plain :cool:

As for the original question, like others have said, there seems to be a photographer pretty much everywhere. Some of them good... some not so much. I always check them out but very rarely do I buy anything. It sounds simple, but the way to make it work would be shots like you are obviously capable of taking at a decent price. Seems like those 2 never meet...

As for format, I would suggest both a digital download as well as a high quality printed option. The way things are today, people are more interested in a computer desktop or putting them online than framed on the wall.

"The way things are today, people are more interested in a computer desktop or putting them online than framed on the wall."

You bring up a very important point. This needs to be considered.
Thanks!
Silverbird :thumbs:

I'd be great if there was a bigger gap between the price of a couple digital pics and the whole CD.

At the events I usually go to, a single day cd is $75, with each individual image $25. (4x6 print is $7 as the cheapest option). That's just too expensive to a tight-wad like me (and most of my friends agree). If you could do like $15 for the first digital, and $10 for subsequent ones, I'd like to think you'd make up for overall sale price by selling more to people like me.

:iagree:

I've been doing track events since 1995, I also have some Journalistic training in photography and understand I little about it.

I would be a customer for good quality shots. by good quality I'm not talking about it being hi res...everything is hi res now. I'm talking about paying you for your skill at capturing exciting images of me driving my car on the track (track stuff depends on the track but capture the essence of the track also...ie what makes Mid-Ohio or Road Amerca special).

Having images for my computer is great but i'm also interested in great pics to put on my walls.

A lot of track events have photogs there but I've only seen 1 guy that I would buy from. I've got all the boring track pics I care to own already. Some of these guys think as long as they get 50 pics of your car on track you will be happy...even if they look like they were taken on a parking lot.

I have a coffee table book by Rodney Lough Jr. that I bought because I loved his stuff but wasn't going to pay $2-4k for a photo for my wall. My point is that Lough is not snapping 20 pics holding down the shutter release for 2 seconds and picking out a $4k master piece.

people will pay for an awesome shot or two that tells the story of car, race track, speed, and event.

BTW: the 3rd pic down of the #3 C6.R is awesome, great composition, framing, colors, capturing the wet track (with image of car), focal points, layered colors, even the advertising adds to the story with the Chevy.com and Corvette signs.

One of the photo companies in the Bay Area that seems to do well is Got Blue Milk (http://www.gotbluemilk.com/trackpix.html). They have a trailer at the track with several computers. The pictures are on the computers pretty quickly after they are shot. You come in, find photos of yourself, and decide whether or not to purchase a CD or other photo package.

Of course you can buy the same stuff online later, but the ability to review the photos at the track really seems to make the difference on whether people want to buy. Its much easier to make a sale on the spot than for the customer to have to go online later. The air conditioned trailer is nice too.

Dog

I agree but the fact is that you're competing against a guy who dumps 50-100 images on to a disc and gives it to you for $30. As someone stated above, after spending hundreds of dollars on the track day, most people would rather throw down $30 for a cd with tons of images to remember their day vs $XXX for a single perfect photo.

Thanks for the compliments......I've always really liked that shot as well. It was actually part of a series I shot for a feature article. Funny thing, that shot was not chosen for the published spread by the magazine Editor/Art Director.
One thing I'll always remember about that shot is what happened a few minutes after it was taken. There was heavy rain about 10 minutes prior to the cars coming onto the circuit. One of the prototypes came by and slid into the tire wall barrier which happened to be filled with rain water. As I was shooting thru the photo hole in the fence, a resultant giant wall of water hit me like a tsunami. The corner workers couldn't stop laughing. At least I got the shot and didn't get hurt. :D
Silverbird

True and I've been there done that...now I want a GREAT pic of me/car/track and I would pay $$ for the talent to produce it.