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Jr High dance pictures


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4 replies to this topic

#1
brentmel72

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Hi everyone.  I am thinking about volunteering at my daughter's school to do the dance pictures.  I have all the necessary equipment, d750, various lenses, strobe lighting, modifiers, etc... and I am still kinda new to doing things.  What would be the best setup to do this?  Lens? Modifier? print company?? The photographer they had last year was just a teacher and they looked bad.  No lighting.  Also, they only charged like $2.00.  I was thinking about $5. and give them maybe 2 5x7 and 8 wallets.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Also, if anyone has done this, how do you organize packages and give back to school? order individual packaging or take the time to do it yourself??



#2
Myersnaf

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I was wondering if there are any high resolution promotional pictures of the movie. Example: The pictures used for the trading cards, posters ect... If there are any would anyone show/post them here?

#3
leighgion

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Well, the first question is, how much time/effort/money do you feel like donating to this cause?

 

Two bucks a pop and a random teacher shooting with no lighting may naturally produce crap, but it's also a minimum investment of resources on the school's part. From the sound of it, you do a ton better, but do you really want to donate that much of your energy and use of that much of your hardware?



#4
Merco_61

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Another factor worth thinking about is that you would need insurance to do this. A teacher doing it goes under other duties as assigned, a volunteer will not be covered by the school's insurance. 

Setting a price even in your own head before costing the options is foolish. I don't see how you can do about 3 5x7 sheets with packaging for $5 per package without doing it on a much larger scale than just one school.

 

This said, for formal assembly-line portraits I would use paper backgrounds, 2 studio strobes with either softboxes or umbrellas depending on what is available and a 50 mm lens for full-length and couples portraits. If you want to shoot formal head-and-shoulders portraits as well, use an 85 mm or 105 mm for those.



#5
TBonz

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Another thought is that some schools or school systems require a background check prior to allowing interaction with the kids.  I know they tend to do background checks on (for example) teachers and others who work for the school system and many require it for the folks who do school portraits and many organizations require it to do sports photography.  As a parent, this may not be as much of an issue, but it is something to consider.  Are you trying to make a profit on this or are you trying to volunteer your time and images?  

 

If you are not going to charge the school, but you want to make some money on the images, Merco is correct in that you aren't going to make any profit by putting together a package for each person / couple and it is going to be quite a bit of effort and time to do your own packaging.  You certainly won't make much if anything when you look at your "per hour" cost.  If I were going to do the shoot, I would take the images, do my post processing and put the images up on a site where parents / kids can purchase prints.  I think I'd put together a one page "ad" that the school can hand out to the kids to take home.  We used to get "parent" handouts once in awhile when my kids were in school.  It would give the link to the site, pricing and any other important info.  You can password protect the gallery and set specific pricing on the gallery depending on which site you are using and the level of service you have from them.  Many allow you to charge for downloads as well so that kids / families could download a low, medium or high resolution version of your images.  I believe some also allow you to put together packages.

 

With that setup, you would have prep time, shooting and post-processing time, and a bit of time to setup the gallery and upload the images.  Any sales would easily be sent to the family's address and you won't have to take the time to sort and package the images.  It will save you time and allow folks to choose the images they want (or don't want) and the sizes they want to print.