This has happened to me a few times - and by a few, I mean that there are exactly 3 photos of me taken during a race in which I look pretty good. When it happens, I am thrilled and my first reaction is to want to buy the photos.
But then when I begin to click through the purchasing of process, my enthusiasm fades quickly. Usually the cheapest photo option is a $17 4x6 print... which you add $4 shipping to. $21 for a 4x6 print.
Seriously?
I have never been able to get over the mental block of paying $21 for a 4x6 race photo. So I have never purchased one...
...until Color Me Rad.
I may have been less than pleased with Color Me Rad's organizers when I discovered that they had no recycling facilities available at the race, but they scored some serious bonus points with me when I logged in to look at my race pictures and discovered that not only were they dirt cheap:
But they were DIGITAL copies that the company then gives you free reign with to do as you please. From their website:
"Select your digital pictures below and they will be available for download within 48 hours. You're welcome to print them, photoshop them, email them to grandma, or frame a 12x18 for your mantel. Digitals give you the most freedom with your pictures (plus there is no shipping or handling)."
Flo-Foto, you people are amazing.
I was so impressed and pleased that I ordered up both of the individual photos of myself and one of Marcey & I (she ordered a second of the two of us).
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| Right after the purple area... |
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| At this point I discovered that I had ended up with purple powder down my entire front. I'm not flashing the photographer. I swear. |
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| The finish line. |
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| Our post race "studio" portrait. |
Maybe some of the other big race photography companies [cough BRIGHTROOM cough] should take notes from Flo-Foto. I have never spent a dime with Brightroom because not only am I loathe to pay $17 for a printed 4x6, I also don't really even want a hard copy. I will take the hard copy, scan it, and then post it on my Facebook, blog, etc. and then the hard copy will get put in some pile of paper in my office until I come across it a few months later when I go on a cleaning binge. And I don't want to pay $4 to ship a photo that weighs basically nothing.
If Brightroom structured things more like Flo-Foto, I can guarantee they would've made at least $20 off of me by now, if not more. I might even buy the bad photos if they were only $1.99 (hey, I can laugh at myself).
Brightroom does the Richmond Marathon, so if it so happens that they get a halfway decent photo of me during that race, I will likely end up buying it even if it does cost me $20-$30. But I will not be happy about it.
Do you guys buy race photos?
Would you be more likely to buy them if they were as cheap as Color Me Rad's?
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