PHOTO DAY / PICTURE DAY

We're looking for a company to do our league's Photo Day pictures. What's so special about using Arizona Sport Shots verses anyone else?

We differ in 5 distinct ways. Our services to leagues, schools, and other organizations include: 1. team and individual photography for Photo Day, 2. Action photography of your live games, 3. We offer custom sports portrait photography similar to getting your senior portraits done, 4. We also offer videography of your games and tournaments. 5. We utilize money-making viewing stations and high speed printers at your tournaments. Other companies have only one or two of these services at best.

Exactly what can we expect if we select Arizona Sport Shots as our Photo Day photographers?

At Arizona Sport Shots, we pride ourselves....

Do you accept cash, check, or credit cards?

We accept cash and checks and VISA and MASTERCARD credit cards.  There's a space for credit card information on the photo envelope for Photo Day and on our tournament order forms. Keep in mind there is a $15 minimum order on credit card orders.

How can I re-order more photos?

For Photo Day orders your photos will be sent to you with a re-order form enclosed. Or you can download it from our website (www.azsportshots.com) and mail it in, complete with your order, to 7824 E. Lewis Avenue, Scottsdale, AZ 85257. For action shots you simply go back to our website, locate your event, and select the photos you want and proceed to Checkout.

Can I pay with one check for more than one child?

Yes. Just be sure to reference on the envelope where the payment is located and what kids it is for (children's names, team, jersey number).

Can I mail in my order?

If you are unable to complete your order on Photo Day please call our office at 480 994-4633 the next business day so we can process your order.

Can my children be photographed together?

Absolutely. Be sure to indicate obtain an additional envelope (one for each child) and put one completed envelope inside the other completed envelope. You only need to write one check which should go inside one of those envelopes.

Will you do re-takes?

Only if there is an error on our part or the photo is professionally unacceptable. For example, the image is out-of-focus. We will not do re-takes if your child is not smiling, if their jersey is not tucked in, or if their hair is out of place.

Do you have samples of available products?

Yes. You can view our products online on our Products page.

ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY & VIDEOGRAPHY

What specifically does Arizona Sports Shots have to offer our league for action photography or videography?

Our photographers are professional in every way. They are courteous, highly trained, and have years of experience shooting action sports photography. All are members of the Sports Shooter, the top professional organization in the industry. They utilized high-end sports cameras that allow them to shoots 10.5 frames of action per second. Their sophisticated lenses allow them to capture shots in low light situations and capture the action of players deep in the outfield or across the field. We utilize onsite viewing stations for customers to view, select and purchase photos on the spot at your tournaments and our high speed printers produce the photos almost instantly.

Our video services include multiple cameras to cover the action on several courts during basketball, volleyball, and other indoor events. For field events, we will bring in our High Pod and SkyPods to obtain unobstructed video footage above the heads of bystanders, referees, and sideline players and coaches.

Why don’t other companies offer all these services?

For one thing, all companies doing Photo Day (also called T&I which stands for team and individual photography) are paid in advance and since Photo Day is such a tradition in youth sports in America, they are guaranteed to sell something to almost every kid in the league. In fact, kids feel embarassed if they don't have an envelope to turn in on Photo Day. With an average salee of about $15-20, for a league of 400 kids, that amounts to $6-8,000 gross for a day’s work. Not bad.

Action photography, on the other hand, is typically speculative. That is, the photographer shoots the game’s action and hopes and prays that spectators will purchase photos. A full day of work can bring in as little as $20 but usually about $200 – 600, (that’s a far cry from $6,000) and in some cases, much more, but those are the exception. It makes sense then for most youth sports photographers to concentrate on contracting leagues and schools for their Photo Day (also called Picture Day) team and individual photo business and forget about doing action photography.

Another important reason is the horrendous expense of the equipment and staff. It’s difficult, and certainly extremely expensive, to have the equipment to do both T&I and action photography, as well a videography. For most photographers, it’s usually one or the other.

So why does Arizona Sport Shots offer action if it’s so unprofitable?

For us it's usually moderately profitable and while the money to be made in action photos is generally far less (except at large, high level events) than Photo Day shoots, we provide action photography as an added service to those leagues, schools, and organizations where we are their official Photo Day photographers as well as at large, high level youth sports events which tend to be more profitable.

If we already have an action photographer, will Arizona Sport Shots still come in and do video of our event?

No. Our video services are reserved for those leagues, schools, and organizations where we are the official Photo Day and action event photographers.However, if requested, we will consider your end of the season championship tournament or state tournament for your league or organization if there are enough teams participating.

If we already have an action photographer, will Arizona Sport Shots still come in and do video of our event?

No. Our video services are reserved for those leagues, schools, and organizations where we are the official Photo Day and action event photographers.

So why are there so many sports photographers doing action youth sports?

Actually, there are NOT a lot of “sports” photographers doing action sports photography. But there are a lot of amateurs photographers out there shooting action sports. Most of them have prosumer cameras but offer their service then snap photos and put them on their website, while giving the impression that they are trained, experienced, professional photographers.

So what’s wrong with amateurs doing youth sports?

Everyone we've ever met enjoys photographing their own children and we certainly encourage them to continue doing so. It's when these photo buffs try to make quick money that becomes something of a problem in youth sports. Most haven’t had background checks done and carry no liability insurance, thereby putting a league or school at great risk. What’s more, the vast majority of these individuals have little or no training or experience. And typically, they do not have the proper equipment or adequately know how to use it nor have the services to meet the needs of the spectators. This can often lead to disgruntled organizers and infuriated parents. Too often, we see these individuals running off with the money, leaving the league with horrible images, or no photos at all. While we encourage everyone to pick up a camera, we also believe in the integrity of our profession and feel amateurs – often with no more than just a camera and a website – attempting to pass themselves off, or give the appearance that they are trained professionals, with professional experience and equipment, are committing a fraud againt the league or school, parents, and the kids.

What’s “Sports Portraiture?”

It’s the same as having your family’s portrait done (we do those too), except this is typically an athlete or other performer in uniform, jersey, or costume. Athletes and performers will often ask us to also do their dress-up and street clothes portraits, similar to getting your senior portraits done. We can easily accommodate their needs for both in-studio and location portraiture.

TOURNAMENTS

Do you do tournaments?

Absolutely. Our action photography and videography is primarily aimed at tournaments and championship event at the local, regional, state, and national levels throughout the Southwest.

Can you explain your setup at tournaments?

Certainly. We bring in pro photographers/videographers and set up our indoor or outdoor “booth.” Our indoor booth includes tables and chairs, staff, LCD viewing monitors, computers, printers, various products on display, and so forth.  Our outdoor booth is identical but also includes one or more canopies for shade. Our photographers bring their digitial cards containing the images to our booth operator for downloading. This typically takes 2 minutes. Images are then available on the LCD monitors where spectators can select a game and view the photos of their team in action. Customers then write down the number of the photo(s) they wish, and bring those to the booth operator who accepts payment then prints out the photos, slips them in a cardboard frame, and then into a handy plastic carrying bag. At events where we are not printing onsite, customers fill out an order form and are given a receipt. Photos are processed and mailed within 7-10 business days.

What if our event is located at multiple venues?

We can usually cover several venues at the same time depending on the size of the event and location of the venues. Sometimes if a large event has multiple exits it's necessary for us to setup two or even three booths at the same venue.

How do spectators see the photos?

Our primary method is by onsite sales through the use of viewing stations that can range from 4 to 30 depending on the size of your event. Customer view, select, purchase, and have their photos printed out on the spot. After the event has ended, we will put the photos on our website as a courtesy to those who were unable to attend the event. But that’s a courtesy to those who were unable to attend the event.

So you print photos onsite as well?

Yes. We use high speed printers that eliminate customers from having to wait for their photos. However, if an event is huge (2,000+ participants), we prefer to take orders at our booth so that we can handle more customers more quickly. In that case we begin processing photos the following day and mailed to customers within 7-10 days.

Won’t the photos get smudged or smear while handling at the event?

No. We use dye sublimation printers since inkjet prints are not ideal for event printing primarily due to the wet ink, fragility of the image, and slowness of the printing process. Dye sub printing is dry and can be handled instantly without smearing. The quality of the print is fantastic and will last up to 70 years or more. The printer we use is among the fastest so customers can expect their photos in less than 30 seconds. No fuss, no muss.

What’s the advantage of using viewing stations over just putting the photos online?

Keep in mind that the vast majority of sales will occur at the event, when excitement and interest in buying is at its highest, not the following day or later when potential customers will have lost the thrill of the moment. So as a fundraiser for your event, using onsite viewing stations are unquestionably the best way to go. In addition to being the most profitable way to generate revenues from an event viewing stations are intuitive, expedient, and can handle large crowds of spectators with ease.

If they're so good, why don’t the other youth sports photographers have viewing stations?

Acquiring viewing station is a very, very expensive proposition, a very, very expensive setup, costing about $10,000 per 4 viewing stations. Not only does it require monitors and computers, it also requires servers, several kinds of very expensive software, and the technical knowledge to run and troubleshoot the system. Most photographers are not prepared to get that involved in action photography.

Here again many of the photography companies will focus their attention on doing the Photo Day team and individual photos and stay away from action photography and viewing stations simply because of their speculative basis, poor financial return, and extreme expense requiring specialized fast cameras and lenses and horrendously expensive viewing station/computer set-ups. Not using this gear also allows them to travel light and not have to purchase a van or truck and trailer to haul all the gear.

What about companies that use contact sheets for customers to view the images or those who run to 1-hr Photo to get them processed?

This is probably the most annoying and least effective way to sell photos onsite. We, like most experienced photographers, tried the contact sheets approach several years ago.. With viewing stations, you can double-click an image to enlarge it for closer viewing. You can't do that with contact sheets, which typically have 9 -12 tiny thumbnail images per page. Besides, those people that use contact sheets also use inexpensive inkjet printers which print very slowly. After photographing an event and bringing the camera disk to the booth the operator then has to load the images into their computer system. Once this is done, customers begin to arrive at the booth and wait for the contact sheets to be printed. This can take several minutes per sheet.

If this is a championship event and the photographers have taken say, 250 shots of the game, it would require approximately 20-27 pages (9-12 images per page) to cover that single game for just one customer to view. If you put more images on the sheet, the images have to become even smaller, making it extremely difficult to discern details. If there was only one printer, taking about 2 minutes to print, A customer would have to wait 40 minutes to nearly an hour to view all the pages. And that's for only one customer! If you had two printers, that doesn't cut the time in half it only allows two sets of 20-27 pages to be printed at the same time during that 40-54 minutes waiting time. Even if a dye sub printer was used it would take 30 seconds for each page times 20-27 pages. That comes up to 10-13 minutes per 20-27 pages and here again, that's for only one customer. By the time you've finished printing the first set for one customer to peruse, the majority of the other customers would have walked away. So you're thinking that a booth operator needs two dye sub printers. At $4,000 a pop, that's not likely. Instead, most photographers will simply put them up online, or take fewer shots of the championship game (meaning less contact sheets to print) thereby depriving the league of a handsome percentage while the photographer is depriving him/herself of a greater share of the pie than if they had used viewing stations. Remember too that the more printers you have, the more people you'll require to operate those printers. But if you have viewing stations, whether it's 4 or 60, you need only one operator.

Is it possible to have team photos taken at tournaments?

Our course. In fact, we typically solicit coaches to have their team photo taken. Also, if an event is large enough, we will have the event logo printed on a backdrop (we pay for this). We then get the championship winning teams and have each player individually photographed, along with the trophy, against this backdrop. We also do the championship team photo.

I noticed that you offer your action photography services to spectators on a “Prepaid Request” basis. What is that?

Regardless of how many photos we take or how good they are, the fact is only about 2-3 parents per any given team will actually purchase photos. So rather than just photographing everyone that steps in front of our lens, we try to focus (pun intended) on those kids who truly want us to capture a moment in their child’s sports life.

How does the Prepaid Request work?

Very simply. At tournaments a customer comes to our booth and makes a request to have us photograph their child in action. The fee for this is $25 and can be applied to any photos or products they wish to purchase. If for some reasons they don’t see anything they want to buy, their money is refunded on the spot. The $25 fee tells us that the customer is seriously interested in having us photograph their child. In short, we no longer photograph everyone in sight. We now let the spectator/customer decide who we are to photograph.

How about the coach’s kids?

We always try to photograph the coaches child, even without prepayment, because we believe the coaches have gone out of their way to devote their time and energies to these young people while at the same time providing a safe learning alternative to just hanging out on the streets. This is an extremely valuable service to our young people and our communities so we go out of our way to say “thank you” to coaches, including providing them with a discount card to receive a substantial reduction in their photo purchases of their child (Limit: 2 coaches per team) as well as free, low resolution images for their league or team websites.

VIEWING/ORDERING ONLINE

How do we view and select the photos we want to purchase online?

It’s easy. Most games will be listed on our website. Simply click on the link for that sport and select your game. You’ll then see the game photos. You can click on any photo to magnify the image. If you would like to order that photo, you simply add it to your shopping cart and continue to browse the photos. At any point you may add or remove photos from the shopping cart. You can choose from several different print sizes and specialty products.

How do we actually purchase the photos we select?

At tournaments, photos can be purchased onsite or later, online. When shopping on our online store, you simply select photos to be added to your Shopping Cart and, when you are finished, you can proceed to a painless electronic Checkout. Our online storefront (fully secure and encrypted) accepts all major credit cards. The storefront immediately runs your card for approval. You will receive a confirmation email within a couple of minutes summarizing your completed order. This is your receipt.

How do I view photos on your website?

Piece of cake. When you click on PHOTOS on our website you’ll be taken to another page that will give you a selection of PHOTOS A or PHOTOS B. The first one, hosted by PhotoReflect our internet partner, is primarily unprocessed, right out of the camera photos from events that have occurred within the last 30-60 days. Since you’re only actually viewing thumbnails (you’ll receive the full resolution, processed images when you order), it takes us only a few hours to load hundreds of photos. This means we can get photos up on our website fairly quickly. PHOTOS B, hosted by Smugmug, on the other hand, contains photos that date back as far as 2005 all the way to present. Here many, but not all, of the photos have been processed. Smugmug requires that the entire digital file be uploaded so hundreds of photos can take days to upload. As a result, we only put a few select games or performances from any given event up on Smugmug. But keep in mind if you don’t see your event in PHOTOS A, then try PHOTOS B or email us at info@AZSportShots.com.

While browsing the Photos A,  I saw a reference to "My Album." What is that?

If you see one or a slew of photos you would like to share with someone, you can create an Album. That Album can be emailed or shared with anyone. Think of your Album as an on-line holding tank for your photos. The Album has another very useful function. If your browsing a large event, just stash away the shots you like in your album. Then when deciding what to purchase, you can go to your album without having to go back to the actual event. This will save you a ton of time! If ordering a slide show, just put the shots you want in your Album and email the Album to info@AZSportShots.com. That way we know exactly which shots you want.

What's to keep me from just "right-clicking" a photo and downloading it right to my computer?

Actually three things: First of all we believe all people arae inherently honest. And as an honest person, you recognize that to do so is tantamount to stealing. But just in case you stray, on the Photoreflect pages the photos you see are only a very small "thumbnail" image. The real, high-resolution files you need for printing reside safely tucked away on the servers. If you try to right-click the enlarged image, you will get a pop-up window reminding you that these photos are protected by the Federal Copyright laws. The only way to get prints from the files is through the PhotoReflect Checkout. You also have a choice of purchasing either prints or the actual digital file (which is much higher in cost). Selecting digital high-resolution files allows you to print whatever you want, whever you want (CostCo, ?????), as often as you want, and in any size you want, Purchased files are emailed to you usually within 24 hours. With Smugmug the photos are also right-click protected. Besides, our name, ARIZONA SPORT SHOTS appears across the online image although it doesn't appear on the actual print that we send to you. Here again you can order the print or actual high-resolution digitial file.

When will I be able to view the shots you took at our event?

Typically we aim for no longer than 24-72 hours after the event has ended. Photos are edited (corrected for proper density and color, cropped, etc.) after you have placed your order. Feel free to email us anytime for an update on when your photos will be online.

What's all this about "personalization" of my photos?

Any photo can contain a few lines of personalized information at no cost. The way do do this is easy. When you're at the Checkout, you will be asked whether you'd like to pay by credit card or check. When you select a method, you will see a an area to give us any special instructions. This is where you type in whatever text you want on your photos. Be reasonable...a few lines is most effective.

Once I place my order for action photos, how long will it be until I see my pictures if I purchase them online?

7-10 days. They are shipped from the lab directly to the address you indicate when checking out.

I don't want to use my credit card online. Can I call you with my order?

Certainly. If you looking at your photos in PHOTOS A, the easiest way is to send us images that you placed in your Album via email (see above) along with your phone number. We can then go in and quickly fulfill your order and take your credit card information over the phone.