Orders and Printing at events

[Asher Kelman]

Sports events, Charity Galas, Weddings, all require hundereds to thousands of images to be sorted and assigned to an identity.

Who has mastered on site orders and/printing at events and how do you organize it.

Asher

[Jack Hartzman]

Asher,

This is what I do for a living...Event Photography. It doesn't really matter to me if it's a corporate event or wedding, it's all the same to me. Is there a particular event that you're trying to solve an issue with or simply "in general"?

For 4 years running, my studio has been the official photographer of the Biotechnological Annual International Conference (www.bio.org or to see images: http://www.visualwow.com/events/bio2006/). Michael Tapes has been a big part of our development and managment team as far as RawWorkFlow and production goes. Over a 5 day period of time, we capture more than 50,000 images from 8 photographers - ALL shot RAW. We do daily back-ups, conversion to jpg, upload to web, dowload to daily newletter (PR dept) as well as feature article work for the parent organization.

We have a systematic process that get refined each year, but the basic outline is as follows:

Key Software: Downloader Pro (www.breezesys.com), and RSP (www.pixmantec.com)

We start with two PC's with matched software and card readers. Each job shot is given a unique job (or event) number. When the photographer comes in with a completed job, the CF card is handed to the production manager. Upon insertion to the card reader, Downloader Pro is launched. DLP quickly codes the file with event/job number, date and other key info. As soon as the card is dumped, the card is moved to the second PC, and the exact same process is repeated. At the end of each day, PC #1 is automatically backed up to an external HD. At the end of 5-6 days of shooting, I have 3 copies of everything.

I can go into more details, but I think this info should get you started.

Be Well.

JACK

[Asher Kelman]

Thanks Jack!

I wish it was for Mac!

Still, with a new Mac PB Pro, XP is possible and should fly!

Is there just as good Mac software?

Also, for just 100-300 people, what is a "starter system" as far as equipment.

Just the rate of printing of copies on site, defies regular printers it seems!

Asher

[Jack Hartzman]

I'm a big fan and have been using Express Digital (www.expressdigital.com) since 1995. A simple laptop connected to a Sony DPR-150 (or 100, or many others) allows tethered or un-tethered printing on site w/ no worries. Granted, I don't recommend RAW shooting for event work, but it is still possible too.

Anyone who may be from, or passing through, the Washington DC area is welcome to tag along w/ us on an event.
Be Well. JACK

Thanks Jack!

I wish it was for Mac!

Still, with a new Mac PB Pro, XP is possible and should fly!

Is there just as good Mac software?

Also, for just 100-300 people, what is a "starter system" as far as equipment.

Just the rate of printing of copies on site, defies regular printers it seems!

Asher

[Asher Kelman]

I looked at the website of Express Digital.

I wonder if there are introductory videos at a reasonable price. It is very impressive for its integration. There seem to be a lot of dealers in L.A. so I'll visit them.

The lowest prive package is reasonable at $500 approx.

Asher

[Brian Hamfeldt]

I agree that Express Digital (ED) is great for onsite printing. It is very quick to learn (teach) and get a novice printing packages with or without borders in just a few minutes.

And for doing smaller, local shows, it has a customer interface that allows ordering.

Personally, I do much larger events and while ED's printing is still great, its dealing with thousands of customers where the customer interface isn't up to the challenge.

Ironically, I used to print onsite - with scripted photoshop, as I can do more in photoshop if/when I need to. But after the first two years of printing onsite, I have not printed onsite in the past two years and noticed an important finding: no difference in sales, yet lower cost of doing show.

At least is youth sporting events, the key is to sell onsite - but not to print onsite. I can imagine, though, that with the booming internet e-commerce, where no product is instantly available (except downloads), having product in hand is not the key to business - the marketing and selling of the product is key.

That is why we employ as many as 101 viewstations (http://public.fotki.com/Hammy/misc/101viewstationsweb.html)(so far). Two things we've known and seen at events for the past four years is that the more photos we take, and the more viewstations we have, then the more we'll sell. That's why we've automated our process of getting images to the customers as fast as we can.

We have 2-8 photographers shooting at any given time. Usually 2-3 shooters for stage events like cheer - where there are 20-30 kids on the stage for a two minute routine, we have our own customer downloader that requires only one click of the mouse to download, categorize and publish all the images to the server - all the images from all the photographers (with readers positioned next to photographers). The server then 'sees' new images and processes them (rotate/shrink) for the viewstations in a matter of seconds. Each copy of images is automatically backed up to a second server. This process gets repeated every 3-4 minutes with 200-500 images every download. (over 90,000 images per day at our largest show so far)

With the images available to the customers on the viewstations by the time they walk over to my booth (distance being as little as 30ft, so images are available in as little as 20 seconds). For the customer, they can find their pictures in as little as two mouse clicks - either by using the search feature, or not. Their whole shopping experience is self-explanatory and needs no assistance. The only other person I have at the show besides photographers is a cashier - to collect money. Orders are mailed out later that week.

A key point - when taking any large amount of pictures - is organization. For team events, we organize by team. For individual events like gymnastics, we sort by gymnast - folders with gymnast first name and number. To shoot multiple teams/individuals - we utilize the folder creation capability of 1D bodies and shoot each team/individual into folders. When downloading, each folder is matched up with the appropriate team/individual and downloaded to the server with additional file renaming (shooter/lens/position) as per setting on our downloader software. As long as pix are organized and easy to find, customers will have a much easier and happier experience in ordering pictures.

Again, for me, automation is the key when dealing with up to 1000 customers per hour at my booth for over 12 hours per day. But for smaller events, make sure you have pictures available and organized when customers walk up to your booth - otherwise, they won't have the time and maybe (stress maybe) they'll look online when images are available.

Hammy.

[Randy Brister]

Hey Brian,

Glad you found this place.

Randy

[Brian Hamfeldt]

Randy,

Looks like a nice rounded site without all the noise of most other - yet with enough traffic of working pros.

Hope to be able to help - as well as learn from the likes of yourself.

Brian.

[Randy Brister]

<<Looks like a nice rounded site without all the noise of most other - yet with enough traffic of working pros.>>


My sentiments exactly. Lets keep some good dialogue going on the Sports and Events boards. We all need to be communicating.

Randy

[Dierk Haasis]

May I point you to Mike Chaney's QImage - brilliant quality, easy to use once mastered [much easier than it looks at first], perhaps the best support one can think of.

[Paul Cote]

TEPS by Triprism is the event software for Macs.
http://triprism.com/products/teps_2000.html

[Asher Kelman]

Paul,

Thanks for that nugget! A great welcome to you. I enjoyed visitng your well designed website and enjoyed talking to you.

Please feel at home here!

I am glad you found us!

Asher