[Tango-L] Professional video & photography services at milongas/festivals

tango@bostonphotographs.com tango at bostonphotographs.com
Fri Aug 10 14:03:23 EDT 2007


As some of you may know, I am a passionate photographer and in the last
few months I covered a few festivals and milongas (you can see the results
on my website under EVENTS). I have a 9-5 job, as a computer programmer
but I'm getting to a point where I'd like to stop doing that. As such, I
put some thought into becoming a full time photographer. Part of that
research was to see if one can combine tango with photography and try to
make some money (not necessarily make a living just by covering tango
events).

So for a few of the festivals I covered, I offered prints for sale, at
what I thought would be a reasonable cost ($3.75 per 4x6 print).
Alternatively, I also offered the full resolution files for a similar
cost. While I was not expecting much, I was quite surprised to see that
among the three festivals I covered (Alternative in Providence, Yale in
spring and Boston in June), only ONE person purchased 3 prints. That's it.
I was wondering if anyone cared to comment on that. Is this what you
would've guessed? I know I would certainly pay to have some good shots of
myself. One reason I can think of is that people could see (and download)
a decent size picture from the web for free and apparently that is good
enough for most people.

To try to clarify what kind of future a professional "Tango photographer"
and/or "Tango/videographer" might have, I have a few questions I would
like to ask the community.

1) If a screen resolution picture of you dancing is free to download,
would you have any interest in a 4x6 paper print at $3.75? How about in
having the full resolution file for $3.75

2) If a screen resolution picture of you dancing is NOT available to
download (but rather just a tiny thumbnail size one or a screen size image
with watermarking covering most of the surface), would you have any
interest in a 4x6 paper print at $3.75? How about in having the full
resolution file for $3.75

3) I was thinking about offering (at festivals and/or milongas) a service
to record video of the patrons dancing (on demand). It would work like
this, the interested party would come see me, pay a fee (per song), and
we'd agree on timing. Then I would record them dance with their favorite
partner (using a device that allows me to film from a height of 12-15feet,
which would allow me to track them at all times). They would then get a
DVD at the end of the evening with a high quality recoding. The price I
have in mind right now would be $10 per DVD + $10 for each song recorded.
So to have a full 3 song tanda recorded, the fee would be $40. If one more
DVD (with the same content) is needed, for the other partner, it would be
$10 extra. Is this something you would be interested in? Do you find the
price: too high, low, about right? An example of a recording I made is
here :

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tATLum7aDCc .

Obviously the quality the youtube video is abysmal compared with the
original file which the customer would get.

I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on this issue.

Cheers

Sorin
my photography site: http://www.bostonphotographs.com
my milonga review site: http://www.milongareview.com
blog: http://sorinsblog.blogspot.com
















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