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
I shoot boxing, which involves a lot of burst shooting. For a big event on a Friday I might come home with 5-6000 shots and I get the editing done that weekend ie within 2 days. The matches vary in duration. So let’s say something that goes 12 rounds and takes 45min i might shoot 2000 pics and deliver 200 of them ie 10% are delivered. Not all of these are portfolio worthy of course but the tell the story and are appreciated by the recipients. But I’m shooting this for the club, not for a publication. If I was shooting for sporting news, I’d have to get say 50 pics from the whole evening up within hours of it finishing.
Re editing, you need to get faster. I cull using photo mechanic which is very quick. Then the 10% ish of pics I’ve chosen all go to Lightroom for cropping and editing. They get a generic preset for contrast, clarity, sharpening etc. If I set up the camera properly there will be very little shot to shot adjustment of lighting and WB which speeds it up massively. And if you have the right lens and framing you won’t need to crop much. Only practice will give you better results in camera.
After 2wks they’ll barely remember the match. And might be on to the next one. Sports pics only retain value for a little while unless it’s an amazing portfolio shot.