vw151

haha

That is clever.

Right on. If you are ever over on Shroyer near Carmels stop in on him and tell him I was talking him up on the forum. He's a bit of a gear head too, not into bikes but just a good guy that like horsepower as much as the rest of us.

Do you know Nick? I'm sure he'd love to hang around and talk shop with you. I believe his studio address is on the site. I'd stop in on him.

I have done some professional photography as well but got out of it early on and started working in IT. IT has been much more lucrative for me. One of my old roommates and very good friends continued down the photography business road and has developed a very good wedding and portrait business. Over the years he's shot many events of the track day type, I still help out occasionally. So I'm relatively familiar with the show up to a generic event where there are enthusiasts showing off their hobby, photograph it, and attempt to sell them pictures. In fact, you can not only show the subjects the pictures of themselves, with the proper equiptment you can print 8x10s or something on the spot and sell them like hot cakes. Instant gratification!!!! Think of the buzz you create if you shoot a picture of Joe Schmoe in intermediate session 1 and at lunch time Joe Schmoe is walking around the paddock with an 8x10 of himself dragging a knee. I guarantee after lunch between sessions you're gonna have more demand than supply and those that didn't get their 8x10 that day will be ordering something to get in the mail, whether it's digital images or prints of various sizes. Not to mention they get to experience your stellar attitude and willingness to provide an excellent product. Hell, they not only get to see the image they get to see the quality of your work start to finish so now they know exactly what they are getting even if they don't get it that day. I think it's fairly obvious that trying to sell them site unseen is a bad idea. There are many other ways to approach it that solve that problem. Personally, I'd love to get my buddy to shoot a track day. He'd love it. Already has tons of equiptment and a website and ordering system in place and I think he'd blow jokers like Kirk out of the water in terms of quality because he is most definitely a photographer first and a businessman second and he has a great attitude and wouldn't try and get in a pissing match with a customer. Wouldn't you rather buy a photographer's photos than a businessman's. Beyond that, you are exactly right about Kirk's attitude. It's junk and further I think he's lazy. His whole CD scheme reaks of him being too good for the racers and too lazy to be bothered with making people CDs. Nick, my old roommate, is one of the nicest and most personable people you'll ever meet and honestly, as skilled as he is at photography I think his attitude plays at least as big a part as his skills in his success. Real quick.... the wedding model is similar to what Kirk was doing but I have to reiterate what you were saying about hiring the photographer as well. Although you are buying a wedding photographers pics site unseen since you hire them ahead of time you still get to see their work first and it's also a wedding so you know what you'll be doing in the pics. Track photography is funny. You don't know where the photographer is at during the day and what he caught you doing. I may not have been clear earlier about the photography statement and I figured it might have upset some fellow photographers when I said it. I agree that someone that has a good working professional knowledge of photography is going to produce better pics through panning and just general manipulation of shutter speed, focal length and aperture to achieve a desired effect. However, at these sorts of events there is 1 photographer and the riders are at the mercy of his skills and I feel that his skills are a smaller part of the equation here than say in a wedding or portrait session. The most important thing in any of the pics is "ME" and what "ME" is doing. The people buying the pics are after quality pics of "ME" looking cool, dragging a knee, or passing a buddy or whatever else. I don't disagree that if said photographer is skilled and able to do the more advanced techniques he will sell more pictures because there will be more cool one's to choose from but ultimately a very green photographer with very expensive equiptment can make the required pictures to make money at this type of venue. That is just my opinion. Hand your buddy a Nikon D3X and a Nikkor 300mm F2.8 VR lens and adjust the ISO to something that gets the shutter speed high and set it to auto or aperture priority and leave it at F2.8 and he will make all kinds of great sharp pictures of the guys on the bikes where the guy is sharp and the background is blurred and the exposure is spot on every time. I guess maybe I should iterate that the person with the camera might need a little coaching or at least need the camera set up for them but it's gonna produce good results. I even think with some coaching the right person could even be taught to pan pretty quickly. Nice thing about digital cameras is you can see your results immediately so if your shutter speed is too fast or slow for the panning affect you can adjust it right there and try again. Do a couple of events and take notes and you got it down pat pretty quick. So a newb photographer may not be as good as the pro but the margin in quality won't be 1000% different if their equiptment is relatively equal. Maybe what I'm saying in summary is shooting a track day is kind of like making cookies, as long as you have an oven, a cookie sheet and the proper ingredients you just follow the recipe and you should be able to end up with a cookie about as good as anyone else. Take nothing away from the skills of a photographer, track day photography is just simpler in my opinion than many other aspects of the art. If you scroll through the pics on any track day photographers website you'll see what I mean. It's turn 5 and every rider in the same spot for a few laps, then it's turn 10 same deal and so on. Maybe sprinkle in a few where he was experimenting with something artsy and that is pretty much it. The art of photography requires a lot more skill and craft, where as making cookies is just that, kind of a staple with which the photographer can make some money. Something say.... an MBA could pick up with out too much training. And honestly if the photographer is good enough at his craft to make pictures that demand 1000% more money I think at that point he is trying to sell caviar to people that were just looking for a cheeseburger. A few people will buy but it won't apeal to a large crowd. If a really highly skilled photographer was working track days I think it would be analogous to taking Iron chef and making him a fry cook at Mcdonalds. No offense to any of you track day photographers out there but I don't think you guys quite qualify as Ansel Adams if you know what I mean and if you do then I hope you get your big break soon. Having made that point, any of the track photographers at these events likely have a decent working knowledge of photography which means most of the photograhers are going to be around the same caliber which means the pricing really has no reason to be terribly different which brings me back to the point about having a consistent STT product. I completely agree with you in the point that Kirk of Dviant image is really just an arrogant prick who feels his work is far superior to anyone else's and thinks he deserves a huge premium compared to the other track photographers. Meanwhile he tells his customer that he has an MBA and is a businessman first. I still don't understand why me knowing about his business practices would encourage me to support his business where he is selling art.... or cookies. Anyway..... I guess that's all I'm trying to say. BTW, this is my buddies website. He kicks ass. I'd love to get him to shoot an event. If nothing else call him if you are thinking of getting married. http://www.808photos.com/page/page/364723.htm

Haha, that about sums it up. It's funny how everyone likes to speculate on the finer details of his business model and what they think would be the best practice. Personally I don't care what he does. I just thought his original model was idiotic. He can MBA his carefully thought out business plans up and down the street.

He signed people up through out both days and no I don't believe he would have just not shot and cut his losses if no one signed up. He was already invested in being there and he was still offering to sell prints and single images online so he would have to suppor that as well. All of the images are on his site right now and you can click 1 and buy many different prints. No he doesn't sell you everyone on 1 CD. 1 that wouldn't fit on a CD if it's full res and 2 I could then just buy the CD and split with all my friends. He only sells you pictures of you on the CD. Yes, I agree he sounds pretentious, pompous arrogant and whatever else, but if you read the emails he claims to have an MBA and be a business man first. Who knows. I just thought he was dumb.

He seems to think he is devaluing his art. Cry me a river, he and the record companies need to embrace modern society and the digital media age rather than fight it. I see you are just playing devil's advocate. I'd love to know if it hurts or helps his business for the sake of argument. I have a feeling he'll never share that with us though.

I'll just say this. I was at Barber with 8 people I knew. 5 of which had previously purchased CDs at other track days. None of them bought CDs site unseen from this guy and they all balked about how arrogant and ridiculous it was that he was not willing to let you see the images first. I believe they would have been happy paying that day so long as he was able to show the images that day, otherwise they would have visited his site when the images were available and probably bought a CD after the fact. At this point I don't think they'll go through the effort to even look at his new business model but there is at least a chance where as before at $30 per image they weren't buying. I understand that as far as statistics go this is a small pool to draw results from but it's all I have, it sure didn't look like the guy was selling very many CDs site unseen at the track. In my opinion I did the guy a favor but who knows. It's not my business and frankly all I gave a shit about was getting what I wanted, sorry if that is selfish and arrogant or whatever. I'm just glad he came around. I wouldn't have been too upset had he not but hey it turned out to be worth the trouble. So yes, in summary the buying the images sight unseen is the main problem, the 1000% mark up is the second problem. Pretty simple.

$60 CD is fine. I would gladly still pay $60 for all of the images. It was the you can only have them if you agree to buy them not only site unseen but even before he's been out the whole day shooting. Whether I agree to buy at the track or the next day or next month he still has to sort through them and burn them to a disk or offer them for download. The only nice thing about his new model is he doesn't have to sort shit. I pick 5 or 15 or whatever and pay. That's it. I figured his best model would be as such $40 for 1 day of images site unseen $60 for 1 day of images after viewing $60 for 2 days of images site unseen $80 for 2 days of images after viewing. This would follow very closely to split second photos model except I don't think they have the site unseen part. I think they even show you the images at the track that day. Works for me. He came up with something completely different and that is fine too as long as my only option after the fact isn't $30 per image. But come on.... "let the dude do what works for him" I'm not making him do anything, I'm merely arguing with him and speaking to the STT CEO about it. Might I remind you that he is the one that originally copied the CEO in on the emails. I just replied to all and I probably would have never emailed Ron otherwise. Ultimately he made the choice to alter his business model, whether he was persuaded by the STT guys or not. I also didn't originally email him to argue. I emailed him because we had bought rays images from him at the track (because ray saw the crash images on his camera) and I wanted to ask him to include a CD of me too which I thought we had come to an understanding about verbally at the track. I clearly was wrong. I really do feel that whatever the model it aught to be consistent among the STT photographers so we can get a consistent product no matter what STT event we attend. I think that is better for STT.

Those look good fusion. Taking nothing away from Kirk at Dviant image. I'm just saying that track day photography is what it is. If you have a long lens and a good camera you can take some kick ass shots. If you had a bunch of shots of me like that fusion I'd be bugging you to sell them to me. Of course the nice things about friends taking pics is it's free for everyone. Again, Kirk took some good pics and this really had nothing to do with the quality of his work and was more about the strange business practice he was using that honestly seemed like high pressure sales to me. The point about the amateur vs. professional photographer really is just that, as much as Kirk toots his own horn about how his photographs have a higher value than the competition I disagree because just about anyone with the proper equiptment and a little bit of know how is gonna turn out pretty similar images. Sure 1 might be better than another but there certainly wouldn't be a margin as big as say.... a Ferrari and a Chevy cobalt. I could see maybe a seasoned track photographer charge $100 for something a new photographer charged $60 for. An added value along those lines is understandable. Have any of you guys done any fun practical jokes on this Todd guy. He seems like a real tool and it seems like everyone is already aware of it.

You know, the last point to make here is that the images probably don't hold their value across the board. the first few images you buy are gonna be worth more to you than the #18-20. In reality if I was actually gonna spend $30 per image then I'd have bought 5 or 10. In this case 15 will probably cover everything I want. I still just prefer to pay the flat rate for all of them and be done with it. I was originally so perturbed with the $30 per image price before that I just would not have bought anything so none of this would have mattered. That is what is called a boycott Todd. It's a part of our capitalistic society. Where we all have rights to talk to one another and rights to spend our money as we see fit and even rights to post these things on motorcycle forums, just as others are aloud to sell things and listen to the people they are selling things to in order to improve their ability to sell things or not listen to them and feel that their customers are always wrong. It's all up to them. Amazing! Eureka!!!! It's a crazy world we live in man. I don't know how I get by.

It was a joke. Ferrari makes the cars not Italy. Lighten up. Yes I'd say that is about what it takes, a very expensive camera makes better pictures than a cheap one and people are intimidated by how to use them but given a long lens and a reasonable camera and a big memory card you too could make track day photographer style pictures. I do agree however, working out the business model might be the tough part. I have a Canon Digital Rebel (8 megapixel) and an old 70-300mm F4.0-5.6 Lens. All in all you could afford this set up today for around $800. I handed this camera to 2 separate guys in the desmohio club last year at a Mid-OH track day and they made these pictures after about 5 minutes of instruction on how to use the Camera. The track photographers are usually shooting with a camera body that costs between $1000 and $5000 and a lens that is anywhere from $1000-$3000 and believe me this equiptment makes a big difference but in the end, if you have the long lens, quantity of shots eventually yields good shots. I left some of them at high res so you could criticize the photo more easily. Have at it. I deleted the big 3 images because they were annoyingly huge. just go hear if you want to see tons of pics that amateurs shot. Sure not as good but proves the point. http://s144.photobucket.com/albums/r197/vw151/mid%20ohio%20tucker%20rocky/ there are tons of pics, some track, some not.

But it's so much more condescending if only the "cool" people get it. BTW, I called Italy and they referred me to Ferrari North America. Who knew it wasn't Italy that makes those cars. How do you think I got my Ducati. geez.... I argued with them about how Suzuki's are so much cheaper until they got tired of me. I'm starting to realize that maybe Todd's problem is not my argument but that I posted it on this forum. I only did that for entertainment and informational purposes. Todd, why did you post in this thread?

Thanks wrillo, As I do all too often I was just having too much fun arguing with him. I've heard that about Todd before from some of my friends that I know off of the internet. The hard part is trying not to be a douche bag in the responses but yet still get a healthy dose of sarcasm in every bite.

It's a crazy world we live in where capitalism and freedom of speech allow things like this to go on. Honestly, I pretty quickly got to the point where I didn't care if I got the images or not but I figured I'd see it through as writing is fun.

I guess you can spin it however you want. I actually discussed it with the photographer at the track and told him I did not want to buy my images site unseen and would email him regarding buying a CD after the fact. Based on our discussion I thought we had a verbal agreement. I then emailed him and was denied, I then discovered his pricing scheme. Based on what he was saying at the track I actually thought that the digital images were to be unavailable after the track day. I later found that he was charging $30 per image on his site which I felt was unreasonable. If you actually read the content of the email you would have seen that I actually suggested selling the CD at the track at a comparable discount to what he sells it for on his site but also feel that a 1000% markup for the privilege of being able to see what you are buying before purchase was unreasonable. So.... I feel that paying $20 more after the track day and not having to buy on "Faith" as Kirk calls it is worthwhile and reasonable. Beyond that I feel that a $400 savings justifies win status. For the record I'm not competing against my buddies price, if we are gonna talk about a win and a loss I'd say it would involve me and the photographer and the measure of a win or a loss is not black and white. I do think that I'm the one that gets to determine whether it's a win or a loss though being that I'm the one who put in the effort and of course me winning doesn't mean he lost. We can both win here and I think we did. Here is how I would determine a win or loss in this situation. ....and that is how it would work. I don't think I'd even consider the random guy on ohio-riders named todd's opinion on the matter even if he doesn't think it's a win. Lucky for him though, if he ever attends a track day that Dviant Image photographs he will now have these cheaper alternatives for his photography needs along with the option of buying the CD site unseen at the track. I think everyone won, even Todd.

Really? let me do the math 15 images x $30= $450 $50 x 1 image package = $50 15 images = 15 images either way $450 - $50= $400 Hmmm, after working it out I'd say I saved $400 FTMFW!!!!!! Seems like a win to me. My buddy got a CD, it had 20 images on it. So big deal, worst case I could spend $80 and get all images. Then the math would be pretty similar to above, still a savings of say .... a set of brand new race tires or so. I also fail to see where I was outside of my rights. We all operated like adults here. I can question his business model up and down the street if I want to regardless of my education on the matter. It doesn't mean he has to change a thing and it certainly doesn't mean I know more than he does, it just means I disagree with the way he operates and I'm letting him and others know about it. I could have an IQ of 50, never have seen a camera or motorcycle or track day or a business in my life and I'd still have every right to email this guy about whatever I want. He could then deal with it however he saw fit. Ignoring me is with in his rights. What are you trying to say here? Are you just a negative nilly?

Whatever man. You can email Italy all you want and he is well within his rights to tell me to fuck off just as much as I'm with in my rights to send some emails to some people and try to make things happen the way I want them too. I must have presented a valid enough argument considering things did actually change. Maybe you should email Italy and see what happens. Makes no difference to me. I hardly think his photos are a Ferrari to a cobalt though. They are track photos, that means, proper exposure, a good long lens and high quantity and you'll get some good shots. Sorry if I upset you. This guy just rubbed me the wrong way and I prefer not to pay hundreds of my hard earned dollars for some track photos when everyone else offers an equal product at a much lower price. I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to voice my opinion about it even if I do sound like a whiny sally. Are you a photographer or something? What is your email address? Maybe we can engage in a battle of witts.

I got another reply from him. Lot's of prompt replies He changed his business model. $20 per image, $30 for 5 images $50 for 15 images. I'm happy with that. I can't say I agree with his views about consumers devaluing art and music but hey, at least he changed his business structure even if he did have to tell me how educated he is. Sorry dude, I don't give a shit about your MBA. It's capitalism. My dollars, your product. That's it. I think I'll go ahead and purchase 15 images and vote for this with my dollars.

You are leaving out some key details in my opinion but yes what you have said is true. Here is what I'm screaming. Other photographers allow you to buy there product at more reasonable prices after allowing you to see the images. This photographer sells the images site unseen based on faith (even if you've never met him) at a reasonable price and then at a 1000% mark up once you are able to view the images and then justifies it through some silly college theory. So, yes, you are correct in saying I can not afford to buy his images at his price and I do think it's stupid, but I think it is also valid to expect a consistent experience from an STT track photographer and that a 1000% mark up is unreasonable. And yes, I'm pitching a fit about it because I have every right to. I do realize I might sound like a whiney brat but I just got very annoyed with the situation. I'm just interested to see how it goes so I'm seeing it through to the end at this point.

Any ideas on what the best way to flush one of these tanks out is. I pumped the gas out and shook out as much as I could but it's hard to get all of the fluid out of the thing. Anyone have any special methods?

LOL, that was early on when I just wanted to get the stupid images from him. Once he started being a tool I decided to be persistent.

Yah he's a moron. Here is my impression of him. Random dude: Hey dude, here's some money for doing practically nothing. Kirk: No thanks man I'm more interested in keeping my nose in the air. I'd rather eat ramen noodles at home than make money taking pictures.