So long story short I couldn’t play fall sports this year from an injury over the summer and I’ve been into photography for a while. I know settings wise how to capture sports pictures that’s not my issue, my issue is like the amount of pictures I should walk away with from each event. I’m currently shooting for my schools girls VB team and guys soccer team because they made sectionals. For the girls games I’m coming home with about 500-600 unedited raw pictures, and I end up with any where from 50-80 finished pictures, and I complete them in about 4-5 days. For the guys soccer games I came home from the sectional final which we won with 3500 raw pictures and I’m currently weeding through them, and I’m gonna edit them in the next week-2 weeks. Is this enough pictures, is it too much, and what’s normally a good time frame to promise coaches and the athletic director? I kinda want to turn this into a side hustle and have a paid gig after highschool because I’m going to college close to my highschool and I don’t really have any one to guide me. Hypothetically if I were to approach the school or coaches to set a rate what is reasonable to charge? Any advice is truly appreciated.
I should also add that I’m just spamming the hell out of high speed burst, not trying to line up 2000 different shots
As a reasonably experienced amateur here: Depending on the sport or even just how the teams position on the field, I walk away with 600-2500 images from a sports game, usually the lower end unless it’s particularly action packed. I end up keeping around 10 to 20%, and during processing usually cull that down a bit more. The first time covering a team I tend to overshoot, and might put up a shot of every player just so they have a photo of them, later games I’ll get more picky. This wasn’t a conscious thing, just something that I noticed I do.
I never understood “story” until I tried to put a book together. Even just putting one together in a publishing program as a PDF that you’ll probably never print… is a good exercise in noting the types of shots you’re missing; wide establishing shots of the turf/field, crowds, team celebrations, etc. You’ll think you have heaps of images, but for telling a story you won’t, at least if you shoot like I did.
Practice is the big one also.
And only share your best work. I throw away anything blurry even if it’s the ideal shot from a burst… people only have an opinion of the images you show them, so just show your best stuff. There’s the odd shot that can be artistically blurry though… you’ll work it out ;)