3 Photographers and Assistants Required

[Chooko]

Our company trading as The Event Photographer covers a wide range of indoor / outdoor events all over the UK.

We are based in Bolton, Lancashire.

Freelance work is available from April until mid-October and is initially being offered on a weekend basis building up to approximately 5 days a week during our peak season of July to August.

The main body of our work is covering Athletics and Equestrian events. The essence of how we operate is that we book events, travel to the event, set up a mobile sales tent with multiple digital viewing stations, take and print competitor’s photos on-site which they can then take home with them. We also cover a large number of School Proms.

We are looking to take on three Photographers (with their own assistant – see below) to cover the 2008 season and beyond.

For every Photographer used at an event the load on our sales tent dictates that a Sales Tent Assistant is required to support the addition sales / workflow generated. Ideal Photographer candidates will come teamed up with a friend / partner who can work in the sales tent. The Sales Tent Assistant’s will be customer facing so need to be of a friendly and helpful disposition. All training for this role will be given e.g. they do not require any photographic skills. They are there to sell photos collectively taken by the team.

All events will require travel to by car so a driving license / vehicle is essential. We reimburse realistic fuel costs. Many events we cover are multi-day events and this means staying on-site / camping. Photographers will be expected to provide their own tent / share accommodation with their Sales Tent Assistant friend / partner with whom they will travel to the event when the event runs for more than one day. We sleep in a converted jumbo van!


Successful candidates for the Photographer position will require the following:-

Must have having a solid knowledge of their camera, it’s capabilities, be able to think on their feet and handle considerable pressure at times. We may be able to come to some arrangement to use one of our cameras / lenses if some security can be provided.

Must be able to appreciate that this is purely commercial work and as a small business we only take home the proceeds of what we sell. We have a simple formula – we shoot good quality photos that the competitors will want to buy. As manager of the photographic team my attitude is that I am here to take photos that sell on the day. With this money I pay the gas bill etc. I can do as much creative work as I wish in my own time. We expect our Photographers to work to this philosophy. Direction will be given and it follows that a willingness to take direction is essential.

Specific sports / action photography experience is essential. We are not necessarily looking for photographer’s with a wonderful CV who have already covered many high profile events. We are not even necessarily looking for paper qualifications as this doesn’t guarantee a working knowledge of a sports camera. We are looking for hard-working reliable and talented photographers with initiative who can get results and who can provide evidence of their work / skills and can work flexibly to a brief. As the successful candidates will be partly paid on a per photo sold basis the customer is the ultimate critic of your talent. The bottom line is – if they (the customer) don’t like them and don’t buy them we don’t get paid.

No specific experience is expected for the equestrian events we cover - this will be given.

Both Sales Tent Assistant and particularly the Photographer must be well presented as several of our more prestigious events are televised and our event organisers dictate that a certain dress code be observed.

All applicants must be solid team workers (e.g. helping the other photographers set up shots etc) as a very strong team ethic is essential to making the events we cover make money for all of us. We work as a team and expect all of our team to help out and turn their hand to whatever needs doing within reason.

Due to the element of “roughing it” and travel involved these positions lend themselves perhaps to recently graduated photographic students who are not adverse to a bit of traveling, want to get some serious hands-on experience.

We also have a very busy School Prom season so some studio photography skills and equipment will be considered a big bonus.

Finally RELIABILITY is an absolute must. We pay tenders running to several thousand pounds to cover some of our events and are also under contract to provide key photos for some events with severe financial penalties to pay if we fail to get them. If a photographer doesn’t turn up with or without a very good reason that can potentially cause serious problems for us. Fortunately this has only ever happened to us once and regrettably that we couldn’t afford to give that photographer a second chance once we had been let down once with no good reason.


How we pay:-

Sales Tent Assistant gets between £60 - £100 a day depending on how busy the event is and how long the day is.

Photographers are paid £50 / day flat fee for getting to the event and then are paid on a per photo basis after disregarding the first 5 photos on a sliding scale. Once upto speed to give you a very general guide a bum day works out at about £120 / day. An very average day might be £150 / day. A good day will be £200 plus. A brilliant day is any thing in excess of £400. These are figures that our photographers earned last year - most of them were OK to good days. If our photographers average out at less than £180 / day then something is not quite as it should be.

We reimburse realistic fuel costs.

This isn’t a 9 to 5 job. Some days are long, some days are short. We work until the event finishes within reason.

Please be under no illusion - this is hard work but it pays well for good photographers who follow the formula and work hard! We look after team members who work hard and are productive – after all we want you to earn as much as possible so it is worth your while and therefore you still want us to book you for future events.

Whilst as I have pointed there is definitely a formula for success in this type of photography that does not mean that this is not a challenging from a technical point of view. Over the years we have had talented relative newbies who have put to shame some allegedly seasoned photographers who thought they had mastered sports photography and had little left to learn!

In addition to the good rates of pay, regular work and invaluable experience in the fields of Event and Sports photography you will get some exposure to our leading edge digital workflow technologies.

We may consider Photographers who don’t have friend / partner they can team up with as a Sales Tent Assistant but they may lose out in terms of numbers of bookings to a Photographer / Sales Tent Assistant team. There may we some work available but not as much.

To apply please initially contact Simon with a brief description of your experience / equipment / availability / contact details (at minimum email and phone), some samples preferably via a link to your on-line gallery and any queries you may have...



Simon.Cooke@TheEventPhotographer.co.uk

The Event Photographer Home