d3photography.com

We’ve been here and there for the last year, and our main photographers have been off doing other fun things for the last year but we’ve returned.

And it’s been well over a year since we last blogged. We’re sorry. We will work on that, I promise.

But here’s the reason I’m here today: We want to grow our network. We’re looking for skilled, experienced photographers who want to increase the traffic their galleries get and be able to have their work shown on the largest Division III sports network in the country: D3sports.com. We also have limited agreements with CollegeHockeyNews.com (Div I Men’s) and USCHO.com (Div I Women’s).

We are looking for two types of photographers:

1. Photographers that cover specific schools/sports
2. Photographers that will cover anything in their region

For the first time in our 10 years of covering athletic events we’ve moved our resale off our servers and over to Photo Shelter where we have a 1TB storage limit to accommodate fulfillment and distribution but we have also changed our main photo website to link to other people’s websites. If you have a distribution site of your own that you’d like us to link to all you need to do is send us your game proofs.
We have a few expectations:

1. Submit news photos to our media partners in a timely manner (within a few hours of the completion of your event) for possible inclusion to their website. Each partner site has different requirements for image sizes and we will provide that to you.
2. Upload your proof images to our FTP server so we can put them into the large catalog. Right now we have over 600,000 photos from the last nine seasons available for our media partners to utilize in their stories.
   • If we are linking to you we want proof images 2000 pixels wide/tall
   • If we are distributing your work for you proofs should be 1500 pixels wide/tall
3. If we are doing your distribution you will receive a second FTP account to upload directly to Photo Shelter.

We have one other requirement: File names and folder names should be in the following format: YYMMDD-HOME-AWAY[-team] with the file name having a 3- or 4-digit numerical extension. We highly recommend that you also utilize the IPTC data storage on your images with captions, keywords, contact and credit information. If we are handling your distribution we will supply you with a base file to work with where you can change your game-related information as needed.

We are a Photo Mechanic shop and can provide assistance with that and BreezeBrowser Pro in addition to using FileZilla for handling all FTP needs.

So… Now that we have that out of the way we’ve recently added Sabbyshots.com and OhioSI.com to our distribution network and picked up Eric Kelley from north central Indiana but we are always looking for more of you. We’ll work with you to get the kinks worked out (and you can even upload your library from this school year in all sports). We don’t have needs for all sports but we welcome any events you want to cover (Volleyball, Tennis, Cross Country, Wrestling, Lacrosse, etc.). We will run your credit as you wish to have it printed (within reason) and we will also go to bat on your behalf over any copyright infringement. All we will do is take 40% of your sales after costs are factored in to cover our expenses and time and we will even pay you via PayPal for large orders within 48 hours and the rest at the close of each quarter.

Markets we have covered a bit at the moment:

• Minneapolis/Saint Paul
• Los Angeles
• South Bend/North Central Indiana
• Central Michigan

But we want to grow. We want to have to spend more time than we have on the weekends and week nights processing your photos than we can afford to – but this is to make us all happy, right?

If you’re a novice photographer we do ask that you let us know in advance. We will help you in whatever manner we can with the rules, expectations, requirements while at the event and even get you in touch with the SIDs that you need to speak with to gain access to the site(s).

We would like to expand into the following regions as quickly as possible:

• Chicago
• Seattle
• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• Washington, DC
• New York City
• Upstate NY
• Texas — all regions
• Western Massachusetts
• Boston
• Ohio
• Southwestern Virginia (Roanoke/Bridgewater and possibly Greensboro)
• Any city with a Division I hockey program
• We’re also looking for Basketball and Baseball photographers

Our network of experienced photographers have covered hockey, lacrosse, baseball, basketball, football (pro and college), basketball, soccer, tennis, cross-country, wrestling, swimming and diving, softball and track and field – just to name a few – and can help you get started covering an event. We’ve shot in many venues but a lot of schools have put time and money into improving their venues for the fans and the media over the past few years so what we remember the venues as may not longer be the case.

If I haven’t scared you away already please feel free to send us an email to newshooter@d3photography.com. Be sure you include your name, region, schools you know in the area, sports you’ve covered, the gear you own (this will give us an idea of what types of sports and venues you can work in), a link to your work and an idea of the experience you have in the field.

Please, we ask that player parents not contact us unless you have an interest in covering other sports. Also our needs on game day are relatively limited: We like uncropped, untouched photos as proofs ASAP. Sharpening is OK by us – as long as the image isn’t over sharpened) and you can do touch-up work in post-production. Our staff photographers submit their work within a few hours of the completion of the game and do their color correction work on the final product. If you must crop please be considerate of the end user’s possible interests in getting prints. They should be 4×6 in format and leave a fair amount of space for their wants. We tend to not do any cropping to our work and hope you feel that same way.

Thank you,
Ryan Coleman
Publisher, d3photography.com
ryan.coleman@d3photography.com

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