I recently ruffled some feathers.

Imagine its your Friday night and instead of relaxing or going out to have fun, you decide to put on 20 pounds of weight and walk up and down a field in 100 degree heat for 3 or 4 hours.  During that time you do your best work on something. You get home and stay up until 1 am further working on that project. Now imagine this.... People just take all that work you did and steal it, then erase your name off of it to hide they stole it. So all that sweat, time, and effort is just trashed. Well..... Thats what was happening.

Parents, coaches, and players ask me to go to games to capture them in all their glory. Now even though its requested here and there to just focus on ONE of them, I dont think that is fair. Most of these are team sports. Everyone contributes. So I'd rather give everyone the opportunity. Doing that means that I do not get prepaid. Instead I just basically do the work, hope you like it, and hope to make a sale here and there. Whats my sale price? $5 each. I figured that was fair. Because again... I like to be fair to everyone. I dont want 87 shots of just the quarterback. Because the quarterback cant do a thing without the Offensive line to help him.

So after the first game of the season when sooooo many of my pictures were not only screen shot but had AI to remove the watermark and distort them, I needed to say something. I didnt call out anyone specifically. I just said that I know they did it, dont do it again. I also added that if someone continued to do it anyways that I just simply wouldnt work with them anymore. I wont take their picture. Seemed like a more than fair solution to me. And the emails came rolling in.... ALL of them were apologies from both parents and players who begged for forgivness and for me to continue working with them. NONE of them complained about the fact that I stated I wanted to be paid for my work. NOT ONE!

But here comes the internet trolls... They lost their mind that I was charging $5 for a photo. How dare I charge for those photos. Andddd "Ill come do it for free"... I look forward to seeing that guy every friday night 😂. My bet is that he wont. One person even said taking photos for youth sports shouldnt even be a thing. And of course someone had to chime in with "get a real job". All of these people had 0 to do with the program and most of them didnt even live in our state. I let them whine and cry and try to rip me apart for no reason other than to troll. Because afterallI am doing work that I was ASKED TO DO! No one his holding a weapon to their throat telling them they HAVE to purchase a photo. If they dont like it, didnt want it, then dont get it. If you dont have the funds at the moment then the galleries stay up for years to come. We also said we would get sponsors for anyone who needed one to spot them for their $5. Not a single one of those parents or kids argued with any of those facts. But you better believe the internet did. IG lost its mind..

SO after a couple days of listening to grown people whine and attack me... I removed the post they were whinging about. Then I asked other sports photographers if they charge and how much... guess what.... THEY ALL DO! So i dont know how i got on the side of IG where its disgusting for people to pay for your work. But.... troll on.