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
So sports is a tough one.
It’s super easy to over shoot and the reality of the relevent life of the pics is very short.
What I mean is pics from a game more than 2 days old hold no value to anyone except maybe selling to players.
Shoot all you want because if you see something you already missed the picture, but remember 90% of sports photography is telling the story.
My advice is set a goal of 10-20 photos that tell the story of the game and 1-2 portfolio/bangers for your use.
Only exception is if you are making money from volume then 2-5 images per player but that is a grind and is a very small portion of the profession