Junior footy tournament - Job Done :-)

redmonkee

redmonkee

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PHILIP
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Well guys having been given loads of helpful advice and tips on how to approach my first junior tournaments I went along today to what was a fantastic but very tiring day out :)

I arrived at 9.30am with the tournament kicking off at 10.30am and I was surprised at the number of parents that had turned up for this. There really was a lot of people there :thumbs:

Anyway I handed my flyers to the organisers who informed me later in the day that all had been handed (and i'd printed well over 260 :D)

So on with the games and there were 4 pitches each hosting 5 teams. My tactic was to just shoot shoot shoot and I got a lot of standing still as well as action shots plus quite a lot of portraits.

By the end of the day which was 4pm when I finally packed up, i'd shot over 800 frames and after a long day's editing I managed to get this down to 495.

The one thing I enjoyed about the day was the spirit in which the games were played and also the fantastic air styles, face paints and some of the best goal celebrations i've seen.... something I get very few of when shooting Farsley AFC :D

As for lenses used the two main ones were the 300 2.8, which was great for singling players our and getting the tight portraits, and the 135L. I did a few group shots at the end with the 35L

If any of you would like a look at the pics I got from the day you can check them out here
 
495 out of 800 is a hell of a GOOD keeper rate... I would have shot a couple of thousand in that amount of time. indeed have done on many occasions.. well done :)
 
160 an hour is quite reserved when it comes to kids stuff, especially when you've got multiple pitches. At a guess I'd say that my shooting rate is probably double that, if not a touch more; but then again my keeper rate isn't as high as 50% with discounted duplicates, missed focus etc.

Photographing kids footie is fantastic, especially the celebrations as you've pointed out!

I hope that the sales conversion percentage on your pics is as good as your keepers! :D
 
Some nice shots there and a good keeper rate.
One suggestion. Can you organise the shots into folders for each game. It'll help the parents find shots of their children.
 
Wow only 800 shots, I took about 300 and only shot 1 game yesterday. I agree with Byker28i they could do with sorting some way, by team, match or even in the their different rounds.
 
Hey cheers for the comments guys. Much appreciated :thumbs:

With regards to how many I shot, I am surprised I didn't hit the 1000 mark. I started of like a steam train shooting away but as the day went on and my lack of food and drink I soon started wilting and shooting less and watching more :D

It was defiantly an experience I can learn from for future tournaments.

I do think I need to organize the photos in some way but i'm unsure how. I thought I could split them into team names so have a folder specific for each team, but then there were some teams I couldn't identify, and I was worried that if I put some images in wrong folders then the parents of those kids wouldn't find their pics.

I know ther'es a lot for parents to wade through but it does have its advantages in that whilst a parent is looking he/she may see a pic of their son's friend and then point it out to their parent's etc. Also by viewing the gallery thumbnails I figured if your lad is wearing green and white you could just skip all the other coloured kits to find the one you want.

Oh and Helen I just love the Batman Face Paint

Gotta love this one :D
http://www.philcarverphotography.com/photo9269400.html#photo
 
Brill stuff, Phil. I'm sure the parents will love 'em.
 
If you don't know the team names or matches you could always divide the pics up into half an hour/an hour time slots to make scanning through them slightly easier.

It's a technique that gets used in Eventing (horse) photography quite a bit.
 
The kids seem to be much more photogenic than adult players...some great expressions going on there!

Perhaps asking the organisers could tell you which team is which for sorting purposes?
 
DemiLion said:
If you don't know the team names or matches you could always divide the pics up into half an hour/an hour time slots to make scanning through them slightly easier.

It's a technique that gets used in Eventing (horse) photography quite a bit.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea Mark, I think i'll use that if and when I do another tournament like this :)
 
Just had a look through your photos and think you did a super job. Some of the face expression are brilliant. You deserve to do really well out of it and I'm sure you will.
 
DemiLion said:
If you don't know the team names or matches you could always divide the pics up into half an hour/an hour time slots to make scanning through them slightly easier.

It's a technique that gets used in Eventing (horse) photography quite a bit.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea.
One thing I have is a notebook, for writing down information such as scores etc.
At tournaments I generally write down the match details (you can normally ask the parents watching or have an itinerary/programme) then photograph it before you start on the match. It's a nice placeholder to separate matches with the match details.
 
redmonkee said:
Well guys having been given loads of helpful advice and tips on how to approach my first junior tournaments I went along today to what was a fantastic but very tiring day out :)

I arrived at 9.30am with the tournament kicking off at 10.30am and I was surprised at the number of parents that had turned up for this. There really was a lot of people there :thumbs:

Anyway I handed my flyers to the organisers who informed me later in the day that all had been handed (and i'd printed well over 260 :D)

So on with the games and there were 4 pitches each hosting 5 teams. My tactic was to just shoot shoot shoot and I got a lot of standing still as well as action shots plus quite a lot of portraits.

By the end of the day which was 4pm when I finally packed up, i'd shot over 800 frames and after a long day's editing I managed to get this down to 495.

The one thing I enjoyed about the day was the spirit in which the games were played and also the fantastic air styles, face paints and some of the best goal celebrations i've seen.... something I get very few of when shooting Farsley AFC :D

As for lenses used the two main ones were the 300 2.8, which was great for singling players our and getting the tight portraits, and the 135L. I did a few group shots at the end with the 35L

If any of you would like a look at the pics I got from the day you can check them out here
Click to expand...

Hi Phil,
What pit falls did you come across doing the event ? Also what would you change if you were to do another one ?

I have just been asked to cover a 300 team tournament over two days ...Quite a daunting prospect lol
 
Tug

You'll almost certainly find that the tournament is divided into at least 2 separate tournaments each day.. so for example in the morning they may have U7, U8, U9, in the adfternoon U10, U11, U12 etc. Day one may be the 'A' teams, day 2 the 'B's.

Often there are boys and girls teams, so in each age category you get 2 teams.

So.. each 'tournament' isn't necessarily huge, and the good part is that you have a new set of participants (and therefore parents !) in each section.

My point is.. get the playing schedule as quickly as you can so you can see how it's structured.
 
Tugster said:
Hi Phil,
What pit falls did you come across doing the event ? Also what would you change if you were to do another one ?

I have just been asked to cover a 300 team tournament over two days ...Quite a daunting prospect lol
Click to expand...

Hi mate, I think the big pitfall for me was not having a plan in terms of how I was going to shoot each game. I should have had a team sheet and a pen so I could mark off which teams i'd covered and which ones still needed shooting.

As it was I went off memory and hoped i'd covered all the teams at least once throughout the tournament. Obviously I was conscious of trying to photograph each player at least once but I really think this very difficult when shooting on your own.

In Hindsight on site printing would have been better option for me but as it was my first attempt at doing anything like this I just wanted to concentrate on the shooting and obviously didnt have the set up to provide such a service, even though I know you had offered assistance with this :) At the moment I've made 3 online sales which I am disappointed by but I hope that more will soon follow

Tug a 300 team tournament is huge, I mean mine was only 20 team and covering that took me all day and left me absolutely exhausted which brings me onto another pitfall of mine....not taking any food or water :cuckoo:

Tug if you need with covering the event i'd be glad to :thumbs:
 
Be interested to know if, at the end of the day, you get enough in print sales to make it all worthwhile. I find you get hundreds viewing the pictures but very few sales - although mine are not sport.
 
awp said:
Be interested to know if, at the end of the day, you get enough in print sales to make it all worthwhile. I find you get hundreds viewing the pictures but very few sales - although mine are not sport.
Click to expand...

Id be interested too . . Mind sharing some rough info?
 
I don't see any issue with the number of shots - maybe less is more? Certainly some great shots in there. incidentally, what are you using for online ordering?
 
kartracer, the more shots of a single kid you have the more chance of the parents buying a print, if you only got 1 shot of their kid and they don't like it then they are unlikley to buy (some will buy just becasue it is their kid doing somthing) but some won't. If you have enough to fill an album then you have a good chance they will buy a lot of them.
 
On-site printing has to be the order of the day if you can arrange it.

90% of sales will be there and then.

DemiLion said:
but then again my keeper rate isn't as high as 50% with missed focus etc.
Click to expand...

Missed focus? Don't you mean 'shot incorporating artistic blur' ?
 
I love this one.

'I will catch you. I may be slow off the mark, but when I get going......'

photo9269788.html
 
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