My First event - questions

[Michael Boggan]

Every year my church puts up a pumpkin patch to sell pumpkins for Halloween. This year I have talked to the coordinators about having a tent setup there to do pumpkin patch photos for those that would like them. What I am now wondering is how do you keep up with the subjects and there photos etc. I mean from them walking up to the table and saying they want a picture, what kind of information do you get? how do you keep the records? how do you organize it all? Any suggestions would be most appreciated. I am feeling a little overwhelmed trying to figure out how I am going to do this.

Thanks in advance.

[epoh]

I've always kind of wondered about that. I suppose you can just not worry about it at the time, and have the pictures available at church a few weeks later. Then, you can just make proof sheets and the parents can come peruse them and place their order off them.

[Michael Boggan]

That's a start. But how to keep track of who belongs to each photo. hmmmmm

[epoh]

Well, are you bringing a laptop to have the camera tethered to it? If not, you could bring a little notepad and take note of the image numbers for each person. How many kids do you think you'll be shooting?

I'd love to hear from someone who's done this sort of thing. I know folks on here have done similar things.

[Michael Boggan]

i will have a laptop. could be a lot of kids. over the course of 3 weekends...saturday and sundays.

[epoh]

Do you plan on tethering your camera to it? I would imagine the software (I've never used it) has some way to rename or add a note pretty easily. Number each customer when they sign up and put that number in each filename.

[dlbdata]

When they sign up....use a number and add this number to the comment to the exif on the camera after each shot.

[Michael Boggan]

I am shooting with a Nikon D50 and I don't believe there is a way to tether it to the laptop while i am shooting. I can connect to the laptop after each shot and download the images. About the only way I can think of unless someone else out there knows how to do this with a D50?

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Simple solution- have each person put down their name (at least this much info) on a sheet of paper (more info can be asked for but not required). You shoot a pic of the info sheet and then their pic (You may also note the camera pic # onto the sheet). Since you have plenty of storage info available you can do it this way.
If they give you an e-mail address you may be able to send them a small jpg of the shot and find out how many copies they would want of the pic and their sizes.

[Michael Boggan]

Brilliant. I love it. Thank you very much. Quick and easy.

[JMI]

How about just having a signup sheet and, when you shoot the photos, write down the starting and ending image numbers from the camera.

You could also use simple envelopes. Have the customer write their info on the outside of the envelope, put their payment inside, mark down the image #s and bam, you're done.

OR... you could use one of the on-line order fulfillment places, upload your photos, and let them choose which prints they want to buy. You set the prices and the company mails you a check. This gets around the problem of having to keep track of everyone's shots and payments. They simply order their own prints through the fulfillment service. I've used printroom.com in the past but I'm thinking of switching to one of the others.

[Robin Binder]

Jase that's awesome information; thanks - I also have an event that I was unsure of how to set up the print / payment issue; Your way has solved my problem.

[Alyson]

At my DD's gymnastics class they had the parents write a name and phone number on a piece of paper and take a picture with the face and paper in one frame prior to starting each "session". The frame numbers also makes a lot of sense to me though.