 Poster: A snowHead
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A great new business idea - haunt the mountains taking pictures of people having a pee in the bushes in sub zero temps. Then charge them £350 to take the pics out of the shop window 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Tarquin, You should let her know she's a bit back seat (Tanja not Tammy  ) I was most impressed with your shots of the race and Eeyore.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Price just seems to be the business model in N America - I've looked up a few photos that have been taken of me in the US ski by incidents and price seems to be similar (for out of focus on a heavy storm day - clarity not there). Presumably they've tried flexing it and that's the pricepoint that works. Somewhere high end like Whistler there are probably enough hedge fund managers and i bankers that dropping $100 for a couple of nice photos is immaterial.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Maybe all the "unsold" pics also end up being sold elsewhere for promotional material or library shots? Well not all obviously, but a useful portion of the best, most usable ones.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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apart from the fact they seem a little soft, that huge single plank of wood really spoils the images 
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Hehe, personally, I think it makes the picture
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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i bought my photos from them in whistler last week and it cost me $18 a pop, about 12 quid, pretty reasonable i thought.
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| AndyT07 wrote: |
| i bought my photos from them in whistler last week and it cost me $18 a pop, about 12 quid, pretty reasonable i thought. |
Interesting - at $18 a pop we would have quite happily bought some! For whatever reason they must have thought they could get more from us, instead given the starting price they quoted we didn't even try to bargain them down. Ah well, I don't think we'll go back and try to get them down now. We're happy with the ones we took today so we'll stick with those.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| ansta1 wrote: |
ClaudeB,
do. like the images but also feel they could have been pushed a little bit in terms of exposure to make the snow a little bit whiter, but the way they capture the action looks good. |
Thanks for that. As the garden is covered in snow I had a bit of a play and +1.3 makes a lot of difference. I'll try that at Easter.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Very interesting - any business that starts with a wee wee taking pricing model based on first what the salesman thinks he can get away with is one to be avoided IME. See also Double glazing etc.
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| ansta1 wrote: |
| ilike the images but also feel they could have been pushed a little bit in terms of exposure to make the snow a little bit whiter |
Yes, they look a bit under exposed, in that the rider looks dark. Shoot raw obviously, then crank up the exposure a fraction more. In practice you will be tweaking the compensation (assuming you're shooting auto) as the light changes. It helps if you check the histogram every so often. You could probably pull a bit more brightness out of those with shadows/ highlights, although it's easy to overdo it.
Any dark colours on riders tend to be hard to shoot - black is particularly bad. You can try a touch of fill-flash, but that's a lot of hassle and hard to get right. Better to get the people you're shooting to wear bright colours. Seriously.
As someone said, forget a tripod, there's tons of light out there.
Camera gear's robust. I ride with expensive cameras all the time and other than having a 15mm lens clubbed by a spinning skier's tails, I've never damaged anything. People are over-protective of their stuff, it's gear, designed to be used.
The main problem those "shoot punters on the piste" photogs have is that you're shooting people who are generally not very good. So it's hard to make them look good, and you really don't want to shoot as wide as you would otherwise do (so you get less background than ideal because they're scared to get close).
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As far as prices... well, it's a business. It's fairly easy to work out how much it would cost to pay a competent photographer to stand outside all day using a few grand's worth of camera gear. From there, you need to estimate how many money shots you're going to get, and how many of them you can convert into sales. Deduct the cost of your shop front and.... you'll get a price which is probably what you were asked for.
If you take "ego shots" of people riding, then they have a fairly high value to the people in them, so they are generally saleable and you can even make enough to eat from shooting them. No one gets rich, but it is a business. Think of it like wedding photography: you can take those shots yourself with your idiot-phone if you want, or you can hire someone. It's entirely up to you.
Personally, I avoid the piste photographers because I've more shots of me than even my ego needs. I don't want to waste their time.
As far as price is concerned... if you sell someone *any* copy of an image today then they'll copy it. So if I sell you a print, you'll copy it, put it on your web page, all that. I can control the resolution of the image (if you scan a 10cm print you'll get less quality than if I give you a 32M TIFF), but that's about it. Their pricing model will be based on that knowledge, plus the fact that the marginal cost is actually zero as the images are already taken.
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You know it makes sense.
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Please consider at least letting the on-slope photographers take your pictures. They are usually nice people doing a tough job as a way of funding their season (ski bums effectively). They get paid by the shop by the Megabyte they shoot (not how many photos are purchased) so it costs you nothing to help them out; and they may even get a special shot that's worth paying for if you fancy popping in later for a look.
If you're in a hurry they'll be satisfied with a polite "no thanks", but if you have a couple of minutes it can even be quite fun! Many people don't know how it works and some are unnecessarily rude, perhaps afraid of being hassled or scammed somehow. Relax and enjoy it, even if you have no intention of buying the pictures!
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FAQ
