Galleries and online sales for sport and event photography: a checklist

Public event galleries separated from private client galleries

Even if you mainly shoot public events like races or matches, you are likely to also be hired for commissioned shoots. Selling event images and delivering shoots to clients require different kinds of galleries, so to keep it clear and easy to manage in the long run, make sure to separate them.

In practise, this can mean for example having a main “Events“ gallery for shoots, and another (hidden) “Clients“ gallery.

Under the Events gallery, create a sub-gallery (folder) for each event. It can also make sense to divide an event’s gallery into further sub-galleries for easier browsing. You may also consider splitting the event galleries by year, making it easier to delete at once old galleries to free up storage space, but some platforms (like PhotoDeck) allow to automatically expire and delete old galleries.

Under the Clients gallery, we recommend creating a sub-gallery for each client, especially for commercial clients. It allows you to group multiple projects or shoots for a given client under the same access, each in its own sub-gallery.

Regardless of what you set your front page to be, your gallery organization could look like this:

• Events
  • Event 1
    • Part 1
    • Part 2
    • …
  • Event 2
  • …
• Clients galleries (hidden)
  • Client 1
    • Project 1
    • Project 2
    • …
  • Client 2
  • …
• Portfolio
• …

Images easily foundable via search

A sport event shoot involves hundreds or thousands of images, and it is of course essential that customers find their images easily via a search function. The more easily they find images, and the more of them they find, the more they will purchase.

• Use face recognition to analyze your images. The best face recognition solutions work well even with sunglasses and helmets and make it fun for customers to find their images.
• When bib numbers are well visible (for example running races), using AI tools to automatically detect bib numbers and tag images is another tremendous time-saver that can be used in complement of face recognition.
• Also tag the images with the name of the event. Note that PhotoDeck search also looks at the galleries’ names, so that step is not necessarily required.

AI-based tools are a great help, but they are not perfect (for example, bib numbers might be partially obfuscated), so making sure your shoots galleries are also neatly organized and browsable remains important.

PhotoDeck integrates its own face recognition platform for maximum privacy, and is integrated with leading AI engines for image analysis and bib number detection.

A workflow to upload optimized files

When uploading photos or videos from a large event, optimizing the file sizes helps reducing upload times and used storage space. Even when selling hi-res digital downloads, consider what maximum quality your customers really need, and make sure the files you upload match it, for example by adjusting the in-camera JPG quality settings in your cameras or in Lightroom.

When delivering shoots to commercial clients, uploading very high-quality high-res files is naturally best, unless they are just previews of files that still need editing or retouching.

PhotoDeck is integrated with Lightroom and Photo Mechanic, making it easy to integrate gallery creation and uploading in your workflow.

Beautiful AND functional presentation

Your website must look modern, clean and present the images/videos in an appealing manner. It should:

• look professional and representative of your brand, without drawing attention to itself and overwhelming the images: you want people to focus on the images, not on the website design;
• be very easy and fast to navigate and to use -- that is crucial. Usability trumps beauty and special effects.

A good watermark

Private individuals taking screenshots or otherwise downloading photo previews from event galleries are a well-known phenomenon and a curse for photographers trying to sell the images online. Beside allowing people to purchase at an affordable price low-res versions for their social media, you need to protect your images.

Watermarks applied to the images displayed in your galleries are the most effective means to prevent image theft on your website. If your business would be negatively affected by people grabbing images or video previews on your website and using them for free, you cannot afford not having an effective watermark.

A good watermark is a fine balance between protection against theft and image legibility and appeal. The advent of AI-based watermark removal tools make the equation even more complex. Here are some general recommendations:

• Part of the watermark should be highly readable, helping also with attribution (i.e. your business name or URL should be visible).
• The watermark should cover a wide part of the image. For example, a combination of a relatively faint watermark across most of the image combined with a stronger but more localized text or logo.
• Trying to defeat ever-learning AI tools is a cat and mouse game. It will be harder for AI tools to remove fully opaque watermarks (i.e. with no transparency at all) obfuscating key parts of an image (but you’re right thinking that such a watermark is also more intrusive and disturbing for clients).
• The watermark is a good place to display a clear copyright ownership notice, which can be useful in case of litigation following unauthorized use.

An appealing front page with prominent search and direct access to latest shoots

Beside being visually appealing, your homepage must immediately invite customers or event participants to start looking for their images.

Here is a common and proven solution for your homepage to achieve these objectives:

• Display your latest shoots as large clickable thumbnails so visitors can start browsing right away. The easiest way is to set the top of the Events gallery tree as your front page (as we have seen above, you might have other top-level galleries than that Events gallery). PhotoDeck allows you to set any gallery as the front page, and you can even use a dedicated gallery style for it to display the main categories on the front page, for example with very large thumbnails.
• To make your homepage even more attractive, display a slideshow banner above the gallery thumbnails. Like a mini-portfolio, this is an opportunity to display eye-catching images that strengthen your brand, which is especially useful if you also make yourself available for commissioned work. Make sure that the banner slideshow does not use the full space on screen so that visitors immediately see that by scrolling further down, they can browse the shoots (in other words, at least part of the category thumbnails should be visible without scrolling, regardless of the visitor’s screen size). In PhotoDeck, banners have a setting to set their height as a percentage of the screen height for this purpose.
• If you offer a search function (for example for bib numbers of for PhotoDeck’s face recognition Selfie Search), add a prominent search field, for example layered on top of the banner slideshow. When creating the banner slideshow in PhotoDeck, use the template that automatically adds the search box.

Simple pricing with quantity discounts

In this day and age, clients expect to get what they need, including digital files, immediately. So your website should allow buyers to easily find images, see their prices, select an option and order online within a few minutes and without further human intervention.

This means that when seeing an image or video they’d like to purchase, selecting a price option (for example download size, usage right, or, in the case of prints, paper and framing type) should feel natural, and ordering should then be the obvious next step in that online workflow.

Therefore, you should make sure that whatever product you offer, beside being at a price that works both you and your clients, is immediately purchasable on your website.

When selling sport or event images to consumers, your pricing should be simple and you should not offer too many options, to avoid “decision paralysis”. This could mean just a couple of size options for digital downloads (for example high-res and a size for social media) and for simple souvenir prints. For wall decor prints, it is more common to have a wider range of options, as the purchase decision is more involved.

You should also encourage people to purchase several images if possible, for example by using automated quantity discounts, especially on lower-value items like downloads and basic prints.

PhotoDeck includes an extensive e-commerce solution that lets you sell at no commission digital downloads in the formats of your choice, with automated resizing and delivery, as well as prints, either fulfilled via a partner lab or by yourself.

Online payment… and delivery

Similarly, buyers should have the option to pay online to complete their purchase, and immediately receive what they ordered (provided for example no retouching is required).

When using PhotoDeck with Stripe or PayPal, payments go directly and immediately to your own account and ready-to-deliver digital files are immediately sent to the client (fulfillment for ordered prints is also automatically started when using an integrated lab).

PhotoDeck also provides an “offline payment” option that lets you manage payments manually, for example when clients prefer to pay via a method not offered online, or if they are to be invoiced later on.

Once you have connected to an online payment provider and/or set up offline payments, don’t forget to fully test the ordering process all the way to delivery!

Integrated client galleries

Even if you mostly shoot public events and sell directly to individuals, you are likely to complete work-for-hire assignments where you need to let clients select images from a project and download them, perhaps with retouching involved.

Professional clients could for example be the press, a local public organization, or a company in the sports business. You might also do private photo sessions for individuals (and perhaps even collect payment for these sessions on the same website). So it helps to be organized and use a flexible platform.

It is therefore a good idea to make sure that your galleries’ structure is built in a way that lets you easily create private and protected galleries to distribute images to clients, separately from your public event galleries, but in the same system so it is easy to manage different kind of workflows with your clients.

In practise, it simply means that:

• Your galleries are (in your website’s platform admin space) split into different “main folders“ for public event galleries and private client galleries for easy organization and maintenance (naturally, on your public-facing website, only the public event galleries will be readily visible).
• You are familiar with the client gallery proofing and delivery features offered by your platform. PhotoDeck is also a very complete online proofing tool for assignment photography, and you might want to also check our other checklists on that topic!

Useful info pages and portfolio…

Your sport and event photography website should not be anonymous nor obscure. Make sure to include detailed info pages about who you are, the kind of work you do, what clients can expect from you, and with detailed contact information.

Similarly, a dedicated portfolio section (and perhaps referrals) will help people understand your work, and that is of course especially important if you make yourself available for new assignments and projects.

PhotoDeck provides all the tools needed to create great-looking free-format content pages and display portfolio galleries, so you can build a full online presence on the same platform!

… or seamless integration with another website

Alternatively, if your main website is on a separate platform, make sure that both websites are well integrated for a seamless user experience:

• Clear links in in both websites’ navigation menus (perhaps the same navigation in both sites);
• Consistent branding: logo, colors, typography.

PhotoDeck specifically allows the integration with another website, so that for example all Home links redirect to your “main“ website.

Legal matters in good standing

Needless to say, you want to make sure to not expose yourself to legal troubles or bad surprises. This will mean slightly different things based on where your business is based, but the following must be in order:

• Taxes: if you use your website to sell online and are subject to sales taxes (e.g. VAT), your website should be set up to collect them, and you should know how to report them to your tax authorities. Double-check with your accountant or local tax office for peace of mind!
• Data protection: make sure that your clients’ personal data is processed according to your privacy laws, for example the GDPR in Europe. This requires both a platform that does not do anything incompatible with the law (like PhotoDeck), but also that you yourself comply to it when processing personal data.
• Terms and conditions: when licensing images, make sure that your clients agree with terms that for example prohibit uses not covered by the license. PhotoDeck lets you ensure the client accepts your terms when ordering, and automatically include T&Cs in PDF form with digital file deliveries.
• Mandatory mentions: make sure that your website and other formal documents (for example, receipt invoices) include the necessary mentions.

See related checklists

• Client galleries for commercial and corporate photography
• Portrait and wedding client galleries

‹ View all checklists