If the local paper wants to use my photos then I will let them.
Stick to league football and national papers if you want paying as us hobbyist don't have access to photograph them games.
I am usually the only one with a camera anyway and am not taking food of your kids plates.
Originally when I read your post I was going to lambast you for being
mod edit: no personal insults please, you've been warned before ; but that’s probably unjustified without some form of explanation.
I’m going to write this, not in the hope that you will take any notice, but that others might read it and learn. The great irony is that you are directly attacking the OP without realising it.
Let’s take a quick look at Iron’s (the OP’s) situation:
Here we have a bloke that for the last half season, and the beginning of this one, has been desperate to get into football/sports photography.
He has asked questions on here and (mostly) followed the advice he has been given, resulting in his photos improving steadily.
From the beginning he has wanted to get his photos published and move onto higher level football.
So what’s happened?
He can get a Conference Licence (and already has one), but can’t generally get his photos published because the local papers won’t pay and the NLF paper only has so many slots available each week. Without the requisite number of published and paid for photographs he can’t progress to the next level (ie getting a basic DataCo licence), unless he works directly for a newspaper or finds an agency that will adopt him.
Effectively progression in freelance football photography is being killed off by attitudes such as yours.
The reality is that Iron (although he may not realise it yet) has, if he’s very lucky, about a 5% chance of making it into professional sports photography, and that’s mainly due to people like you who have the attitude of ‘I’m alright Jack.’
Every time a newspaper gets an FoC photo mailed through what do you imagine goes through their minds?
It’s certainly not: ‘Oooh, what a fantastic, clear, sharp, action-capturing photograph with fantastic image quality.’
Frankly they will use any muzzy old snap, because photographs equal page space, and every inch of newsprint has to be covered and paid for. If they can drop a passable image onto the page and soak up the space free of any cost, then they will, because budgets are tight at the moment.
If your photograph gets published in a local paper, and they haven’t paid for it, please don’t get the mistaken impression that you are great sports photographer and they just had to use the image. Quite the opposite; you are being taken for a mug, and your photography skills are at best passable.
It’s all very well saying; ‘Go to League Football and make your money there,’ but amateurs giving newspapers their photographs without charge are making that more and more impossible.
A further result of this will be that fewer full and part-time sports photographers are going to be prepared to pass on their hard won knowledge and experience to people such as yourself and Iron on photography forums.
The number of working sports professionals who are prepared to pass critique and advice on TP has dropped dramatically over the last 18 months; and people like you are one of the reasons.
Eventually all you will be left with is a bunch posts with inaccurate advice and suggestions, countered by a couple of lone voices who still hold out hope for the future of the industry.
As for me, I’m fine thanks, as I don’t have kids to feed. However it’s exactly this scenario that has lead to me moving into the news and editorial field (which in itself is equally hard nosed) so that I don’t have to put up with the BS ego publishing quite as much.
So in conclusion:
Well done. You really are one of the
mod edit: no personal insults please, you've been warned before that is contributing to the decline of an industry, and more to the point screwing up most people’s hopes of doing this wonderful job for a living.
