Noticed a lot of people using pics with the “FinisherPix 20xx” watermark scrawled across them as FB profile pics and/or as one of their pics on here. How many of you have done this? Seems like a faux pas to me.
With that said why the hell are they so expensive?! For those of you who have purchased them did you just buy a pic or two or has anyone bought a whole package for 100 bucks or whatever it is?
Note: I understand that this might come across as an incoherent rant.
This is one of the great unresolved moral dilemmas of our time.
Noticed a lot of people using pics with the “FinisherPix 20xx” watermark scrawled across them as FB profile pics and/or as one of their pics on here. How many of you have done this? Seems like a faux pas to me.
With that said why the hell are they so expensive?! For those of you who have purchased them did you just buy a pic or two or has anyone bought a whole package for 100 bucks or whatever it is?
Note: I understand that this might come across as an incoherent rant.
The only faux pas here is charging $100 for a photo. Why do you care about what other people do with their FB pages anyway? It’s not your concern. If you dont want to post the image on your FB page, feel free not to.
Anyway, I categorize finisher photos in the same bracket as snacks at the movie theater or parking at Six Flags—they are just there to rip you off. Here’s a top secret hint: have a friend stand at the finish line with a camera and grab a photo of you. It’s free.
It actually does speak about people’s ethics. If they are too expensive, walk away.
They are so expensive because many people do not buy them, and the photographers still hang out all day rain or shine and abuse their equipment. And of course some people steal them instead of buying them, that also adds to the cost.
It actually does speak about people’s ethics. If they are too expensive, walk away.
They are so expensive because many people do not buy them, and the photographers still hang out all day rain or shine and abuse their equipment. And of course some people steal them instead of buying them, that also adds to the cost.
So you find it unethical, others dont. Big deal. Also, at a rate of $100 a photo, they would only need to sell four and they would make more money than most people make in a day, and out of 1000+ racers, I think they sell slightly more than four. So no, it’s expensive because they are ripping you off
And no, taking a photo that was sent to you and using it on FB instead of buying one is not stealing. That is a logical fallacy that has been disproven time and time again in the music and movie pirating conflict. Just Google it. It’s been disproven so many times that even RIAA accepts it now. In order for a theft to occur, the victim actually has to lose something. There is a difference between not gaining and loosing. Failing to obtain a sale is not losing something because you never had the sale in the first place. Most of the people who use the photos on FB would have never bought them anyway, thus the company is not loosing anything. Even if they would have purchased them, the company is still not the victim of theft because, again, they did not physically loose anything. The correct term for this issue is piracy.
It actually does speak about people’s ethics. If they are too expensive, walk away.
They are so expensive because many people do not buy them, and the photographers still hang out all day rain or shine and abuse their equipment. And of course some people steal them instead of buying them, that also adds to the cost.
So you find it unethical, others dont. Big deal. Also, at a rate of $100 a photo, they would only need to sell four and they would make more money than most people make in a day, and out of 1000+ racers, I think they sell slightly more than four. So no, it’s expensive because they are ripping you off
And no, taking a photo that was sent to you and using it on FB instead of buying one is not stealing. That is a logical fallacy that has been disproven time and time again in the music and movie pirating conflict. Just Google it. It’s been disproven so many times that even RIAA accepts it now. In order for a theft to occur, the victim actually has to lose something. There is a difference between not gaining and loosing. Failing to obtain a sale is not losing something because you never had the sale in the first place. Most of the people who use the photos on FB would have never bought them anyway, thus the company is not loosing anything. Even if they would have purchased them, the company is still not the victim of theft because, again, they did not physically loose anything. The correct term for this issue is piracy.
What makes you think that day at the race is the end of their work? It is not $100/pic. Race photos are cheaper than reglar photos for a professional photographer, they are more mass produced without many options. Using a watermarked photo because you can’t afford $30-50 is fairly pathetic.
The way I view it, the watermark is what the photographers earn because I chose not to buy it. In that they get the free advertising or what not. I don’t feel this is completely ethical, but it’s the sort of trade off I see.
The way I view it, the watermark is what the photographers earn because I chose not to buy it. In that they get the free advertising or what not. I don’t feel this is completely ethical, but it’s the sort of trade off I see.
It kind of depends, Finisherpix doesn’t seem to mind. Marathonphoto includes “do not reproduce” in the watermark, so I don’t think they want the free advertising.
I wish a company would try charging less and getting more responses. 6 people might pay $5 instead of 1 would pay $30. When a race costs less than a picture of me running it, that’s messed up.
The largest profit driver in my business is photo sales. I can appreciate the high cost on the first one. But their model is wrong. Photos are impulse buys. We experimented with online sales at a location and lost 95% and that was with it available as soon as you got home. The length of time it takes them to release the photo removes perhaps more of that impulse. So they price to what they think makes up the cost for Having people hang out all day.
If they could get at least one photo on a screen near the times and priced at 15 or 20 they would sell a lot more. Then they could price the other photos for a lot less to those who purchased that first photo.
You can thank me when they steal my idea.
I bought the package for the AG Nationals race from Marathon photo. It was $55 and I think I got 12 photos out of it, so less than $5 per, I didn’t think that was too bad.
I wonder if there’s a market for an individual or small number of triathletes to hire an individual photographer. Say $200 per person, but that photographer is taking only photos of you, from as many locations (or locations of your choosing) and then you get all of the photos he took take day. So now instead of $40 per picture or whatever, you have 100 photos in lots of places for $200.
FinisherPix has a copyright symbol © on their watermark. Last time I checked, this symbol did not mean the photo was in the public domain.
It actually does speak about people’s ethics. If they are too expensive, walk away.
They are so expensive because many people do not buy them, and the photographers still hang out all day rain or shine and abuse their equipment. And of course some people steal them instead of buying them, that also adds to the cost.
Really. You mean these people spend 8 - 10 hours out there and make more than $100? Shocker.
Marathon photo is the worst. A lot of there even photographers are hired off of craigslist a week or so before the event and are getting paid around - And even then it can be as low as $15 an hour and $0.5 a usable image.
Really should be renamed GhettoPhoto
It actually does speak about people’s ethics. If they are too expensive, walk away.
They are so expensive because many people do not buy them, and the photographers still hang out all day rain or shine and abuse their equipment. And of course some people steal them instead of buying them, that also adds to the cost.
No Herbert, what you’re seeing is the law of supply & demand in action. $100 for a digital photo package is completely out of line. There’s minimal processing cost and zero delivery cost.
Enough people must be buying the photos at these prices for them to make a profit, otherwise the price would come down or they would be out of business.
Probably, but making profit and maximizing profit are not the same thing.
It actually does speak about people’s ethics. If they are too expensive, walk away.
They are so expensive because many people do not buy them, and the photographers still hang out all day rain or shine and abuse their equipment. And of course some people steal them instead of buying them, that also adds to the cost.
No Herbert, what you’re seeing is the law of supply & demand in action. $100 for a digital photo package is completely out of line. There’s minimal processing cost and zero delivery cost.
Minimal Processing costs? I kinda have to question this. I keep seeing that you are paying so much for 1 pic, I think the last three times I bought finisher pix it was around $60, and for that $60 there are between 5 and 15 photographers on the course for the entire day, and since they are just sitting there snapping photos they are not notating at that time who there are taking pictures of. So that means at the end of the day they probably run the pics through some software that can find and identify your race number so they can get the pics as close to accurate. They also have software that matches the race clock to the pictures time tag to also get the swim out pictures and a few other pics of you into your package. Finally they probably have someone going through and verifying at least some of the pics to make sure their system was not out of whack.
So there is some overhead that people choose to ignore. Plus the race photographers seem to get in some places to get some awesome pics, at least they did of me.
at least that is my 2 cents worth.
I also thought it was CAD$30/picture. But it turns out it’s 30 for all of them. So they should probably improve their website to be more clear.
Given that I feel like I’ve spent my grandchildren’s(*) collage fund on triathlon this year I was fine with it.
(*) don’t have kids yet…
The largest profit driver in my business is photo sales. I can appreciate the high cost on the first one. But their model is wrong. Photos are impulse buys. We experimented with online sales at a location and lost 95% and that was with it available as soon as you got home. The length of time it takes them to release the photo removes perhaps more of that impulse. So they price to what they think makes up the cost for Having people hang out all day.
If they could get at least one photo on a screen near the times and priced at 15 or 20 they would sell a lot more. Then they could price the other photos for a lot less to those who purchased that first photo.
You can thank me when they steal my idea.
I looked into starting a photo business for martial arts tournaments that followed the “capitalize on impulse buys” model by having a booth set up where photos from the matches were available as soon as reasonably possible. I considered doing the online after-the-fact thing but nobody would care after 3-4 days and certainly nobody would look through 800 photos to find the two from their fight(s).
Unfortunately I didn’t have the capital to get started. That and there aren’t enough tournaments around here to make it worthwhile. If something were to change though…