Photography

[crfrey71]

I am curious to know if fans and members in the drum corps buy photos online, to remember their marching days in drum corps, or are most of your photos pics you taken yourself, during practices, the trips on buses, etc...? Or do you rely on the photographer who shoots for their individual corps?

Seems to me (just a educated guess) that Jolesch, the photographer of DCI, their sales aren't what they use to be. The reason for that guess is their pricing. $12.95 for a single 4X6 print. Also, it is strange that 2 4x6's costs the same as 2 5X7's, $19.95. Obviously, their goal is to basically force the consumer into buying their packages. A few years ago, the price for a single 4X6 went from $10 to $12.95. A 30% increase. This indicates the the volume of sales isn't there.

I could swear back before the digital world really took off, that Jolesch had some outstanding photographers shooting for them. Anyone else confirm this? It seems when the digital age took off, the quality of their photography went down. Obviously, a nice thing about digital over film is the costs go way down and you can shoot a ton more photos at one venue. Did the digital world chase away the talented photographers that Jolesch use to have? Seems to me that Jolesch went after quantity over quality? They might have figured we could get other photographers (maybe not as experienced) to shoot these instead of having to pay the pros the higher price. They figured that with enough photos taken, there would as a default, get a fair share of keepers, at a fraction of the cost.

Just this past weekend, I shot at the Riverside and Walnut shows, for DCP. Jolesch had a photographer there both nights. At the Riverside show, this photographer was shooting his first drum corps show ever. He told me that. At Walnut, if anyone was there, I am sure you saw the photographer who was wearing the red Jolesch.com tee-shirt. If anyone saw this guy, you could not help notice the crack that was showing. It wasn't a crack that you had to look hard to find either. I really thought this guy's shorts were going to fall down on the track. Nice guy, but a total slob and if I were running a company, I would in no way have a guy looking like that wearing something with the name of my company on it.

Basically what happens is that wherever the shows are that night, Jolesch goes out and hires photographers in that local area where the show is. Now what gets me is in southern california, there are no shortages of very talented photographers to chose from. This pretty much goes for most of the USA, but especially in places like in California and New York. There should be no excuse for poor photos, unless conditions out of the control of the photographer exist.

Anyways, I was looking at DCI's Show of Shows action gallery. The female photog who shot those pics did a very nice job. Really good stuff. I was wondering to myself, why doesn't DCI have it's own photographers? Well, a simple reason is this. Jolesch is a sponsor of the activity since 1975. To me, if they have shot drum corps for over 30 years, shouldn't the quality be at a very high level?

So this brings me back to the beginning of this post and my initial question. Is there a sales drop off that is cutting revenue for jolesch and therefore, not able to get the best photographers they can get?

My experience with winterguard is that the world class/independent group sales are so-so. Where I make my money in the winterguard is the junior high/middle school groups and the higher division high school winterguard groups.

Curious to know what others might know about this.

[Captncontra]

I personally never buy prints anymore now that the digital age is here. I want the large digital file rather than a print. I have a decent photoprinter so I want to be able to enlarge, shrink, photoshop, and/or crop an image to my hearts desire. I can understand why jolesch doesn't sell the originals for fear of illegal sharing, but due to this they don't get my business.

I don't think the digital medium is hurting them, I just think no one wants to buy a one-off print when they can go to the show and take nearly the same photos with just as good equipment or better. 10mp+ cameras are going for under $500 now, get yourself a nice lens and you're shooting great pictures.

[Captncontra]

My experience with winterguard is that the world class/independent group sales are so-so. Where I make my money in the winterguard is the junior high/middle school groups and the higher division high school winterguard groups.

This might also be due to the fact that the kids are older in the world/independent class and less parents go to the events. At this point parents have seen thier kids performing for years and don't really need to buy more photos. Once I graduated h.s. my parents stopped going to most of my performances, and as a struggling college student I didnt have money to blow on a staged group photo.

[Cuban]

Im not going to lie, i honestly am sick of Jolesch. I know one company, that shot WGI percussion in 2006, Happel, was unbelievable...ive never in my life seen such great shots in the activity.

They had about 5 photographers covering different areas of the arena and taking outstanding shots at incredible mooments of shows. Jolesch just waits till somoene is standing still and shoots rapid fire.

Ive never understood why they continue to deal with a company that "generally" doesn't deliver.

[Mistress Kelli]

I hardly ever buy from Jolesch anymore. If I see a decent pic, I might but that's rare. Renegades have a photographer and videographer and between those two, we get great shots!

[glory]

A few years ago, the price for a single 4X6 went from $10 to $12.95. A 30% increase. This indicates the the volume of sales isn't there.

Sorry for this interruption for an economics lessons, but your analysis is flawed. Generally, prices rise when demand rises or when supply falls. I doubt this is a case of diminshing supply. And given that people seldom pay more when they wouldn't pay less, I suspect the rising prices indicates rising demand.

HH

[crfrey71]

Sorry for this interruption for an economics lessons, but your analysis is flawed. Generally, prices rise when demand rises or when supply falls. I doubt this is a case of diminshing supply. And given that people seldom pay more when they wouldn't pay less, I suspect the rising prices indicates rising demand.

HH

You would be right if consumers had an alternative choice. In this case, they really don't. Jolesch can charge whatever they want. If you remember a few years ago, is when the very strict photography rules went into place. This policy was put into place so that nobody else could sell photos taken at a DCI show. That was not a coincidence.

[rockthebus09]

Ive been droning on the idea of buying the whole corps photo from 2006 ... so I have it later in my life .. but it's sooooo expensive. I have bought photos from band events, however.

[crfrey71]

I hardly ever buy from Jolesch anymore. If I see a decent pic, I might but that's rare. Renegades have a photographer and videographer and between those two, we get great shots!

Interesting to know. I believe PC has their own photographer, as well. Wonder how long that will last, until Jolesch complains to DCI about corps having their own photographer.

I shoot and sponsor a winterguard circuit, yet there are other photogs who also sponsor and are allowed to shoot and sell winterguard pics. That is fine. The point is, that I have to provide the best possible service at a reasonable price. To me, it's a win-win situation all around.

[MagicBobert]

Sorry for this interruption for an economics lessons, but your analysis is flawed. Generally, prices rise when demand rises or when supply falls. I doubt this is a case of diminshing supply. And given that people seldom pay more when they wouldn't pay less, I suspect the rising prices indicates rising demand.

HH

Macro-econ isn't necessarily applicable in this case. When you're talking about a single company who has a monopoly on the market, it could very well be that they're raising prices to adjust for a lack of demand. It obviously isn't going to generate much more, but sometimes it's better to break even then take a loss with the hopes of getting more demand in the future.

Anyway, I think Jolesch has kind of lost focus of where their market is. I agree, the quality of photos isn't that great, but I can usually find two or three photos over the course of the season that were really killer pics. The problem (with their business model) is that I don't want to buy a 4x6 to frame and put on my end table, I want a digital picture. In fact, I'm happy with a lower resolution pic because I won't be printing it, I'll be throwing it up on my Facebook profile or something like that.

I got in a bit of trouble with my corps organization director over a tool I wrote that removed the Jolesch watermark from the sample photos. I still stand behind the fact that I did nothing wrong (my techniques were perfectly legal, I didn't modify the image at all I just displayed it without the floated GIF watermark) but I was kinda strong-armed into taking it down. (Don't ask, I won't put it back up or provide it to you.) This just kinda demonstrates that Jolesch really doesn't know where its biggest market is, and unfortunately if you don't know where your market is you can't monetize it very well.

Edited June 28, 2007 by MagicBobert