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The other thing to consider is that equestrian photos won't sell unless they are perfect, showing the horse in just the right position. To a certain extent the purchasers don't care if the exposure is off, or the focus is off, as long as you have the M shape, or the forelegs tucked up or the hind legs just leaving the ground. Your current printer will be too slow if you get busy, a subdye should print dry in about 10 seconds. You will need a system so you can get the images on sale as fast as possible and in a format that people can find there horse. Use the canon to print contact sheets with image numbers that your assistant can then edit/print, and organise them by the competition class. It helps if your assistants have some equine knowledge, e.g. can tell a customer where to find that grey in the 110cm. Your 70-300 will probably struggle to focus accurately in low light, but if its showjumping you can prefocus on the fence to get around that - better to use a fast zoom for sequences e.g a typical situation in cross country is jump, water feature and another jump where you will want the AF to track through all three. You will need to sell on site, where you cam probably expect interest from around 20% of competitors, it drops to around 3% for online interest after the event. Good Luck
There are probably 100 inkjets if not 1000 sold for every dye-sub sold but if you look at theme park photography they all use these dye subs - they are industrial strength machines. You will not normally see these in the more amateur photography magazines and only occasionally in the pro magazines.
Mike
Just thinking Mike that it sounds like a single viewing station type system at the moment (reading between the lines) which might be fine for a small event, but if there are 300+ horses it could result is lost sales as they won't queue for long and you always get those who just want to see how their mates did/take ages to decide which of two images is better (for the OP, an experienced assistant will help deal with both situations)
Ok, I did the first event last Sunday, and with all the help and advice you guys were kind enough to give it went very well. The weather was fine, as my rather red face shows, and the folks were friendly and forthcoming. I got an awful lot of interest...
Which brings me to another question you might be able to help me with.
As it was my first event I decided to just go along with my kit and not worry about a stall, printers, and so on. I just took a bunch of business cards along and handed them out as I went. The event wasn't hugely large so it was practical, and the attendees seemed quite happy with this. I also felt that selling prints online through a storefront, as I have in the past, would allow the potential customers a larger range of products.... All I need now is a storefront, or, at least, a better one than I have at the moment. The site I used when I was working down South is not available anymore, which is a shame, so after a quick look around (I had to set one up fairly sharpish) I went with Photobox. It seemed to cover my needs and was straightforward to set up and use. I have alas found one problem, which is the lack of a function to break my albums down into categories. There are about 400 images from the show, and to help people find their pictures I was hoping to, at the very least, use keywords to help them search (jumps, piebald, pony, etc.). Photobox does have a facility to add keyword tags to an image, but, bizarrely, does not have a search facility in the Pro-Gallery storefront; or not one I can see anyway...
So, with those needs in mind can anyone suggest a storefront company to me?
Many thanks.
One thing you might find, at the beginning the 5d fps rate is a little on the light side for jumping and stuff. You might benefit from having a watch to see the take off points etc so you shoot the right frame rather than missing the shot between clicks if you get what I mean.
Good luck though, horses are truly wonderful animals to photograph
something that seems to happen these day is people just snapping a picture of the screen that's displaying the picture and thinking that ok. Those pictures are on facebook quicker then a rat up a drain pipe.
Anyway as for store fronts, a company called everybodysmile, allows you to show the pictures, which people can select and then buy multiple sizes. they process the payment (double check this) and then just email you the order for to fulfil
Thanks for that Britman. I needed a shop front that does the printing too. I have since posting found and started using Zenfolio, and I have to say I am extremely pleased with it.
A canon man and a neighbour too, Britman. We'll have to get together for a pint and a natter sometime.
Britman - I will regularly take pictures of the screen. For one reason alone. When you have a round with 100 entries, you'll never remember who is who!
I think he meant the customers either taking a shot of the event photographers display on site with a mobile phone or similar, or just screen grabs of your Zenfolio screens. You can protect against many things, but I've not found a way to prevent someone using print screen other than guilt and reminding them its theft.
I also use Zenfolio (currently closed - paternity leave) for equestrian photos and have prints delivered direct to customers. I had a couple of teething issues when we switched to One Vision from photobox prints, but that seems to be resolved.
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