Q: How does this work?
A: It's a flat $60 to reserve every individual race your swimmer has remaining in the meet. I'll take as many photos as I can of your swimmer's races. Once I edit and upload the meet you can spend the $60 as a credit towards digital files and collages. I photograph multiple swimmers per heat so I may not get every second of every race, but every race of your swimmer will be highlighted in the heat sheet as on opportunity to take pictures.
Q: I don't see any products for sale when trying to make a reservation or when browsing my gallery.
A: Click on the picture in the gallery and the available products will appear. I require every customer to be logged in to make purchases.
Q: I can't see my favorites and my password that you emailed me doesn't work.
A: When you make an account on my website you use your email address and you pick your own password. You use those to login to view your shopping cart, order history, and any favorited images. When you go to my website make sure you login with YOUR password that you created. I can't see those passwords, but I can send a password reset email for you.
Q: I favorited some images and I logged back in and I'm looking at my favorites, but I don't see any products for sale. How do I buy stuff?
A: If you logged into the site with your email address and password, then "logged in" to a gallery with your phone number and swimmer name and added favorites from that gallery, you will need to go back to the gallery upon logging back in to view products for sale. If you log back in to the site and go straight to your favorites you'll see your favorited images, but no products for sale. The products that are for sale are tied to price lists and each gallery has a price list attached to it. In other words, to see the products sold you must log in to the gallery with your phone number and swimmer name again. That's where you go to add products to your cart. Once you have a product in your cart you can fill that product in with photos you've already favorited. You don't have to use the favorites feature to buy photos, but sometimes it makes things easier.
Q: What's the gallery password?
A: After you login to the website with your email and password, you can then put in the password (formerly called passCODES, but I guess they changed the wording on my website as of March 2024) to view your swimmer's photos. That password is your phone number and your swimmer's first name. The phone number will be the one you signed up with (you can view it in your account info) and your swimmer's first name is the one you typed on the form (again, should be viewable in your order history). Phone numbers are just the digits, so 5557779999 and for names all special characters have been changed to their English equivalent so ë, è, é, and ê would all become e. If your swimmer has a two part first name (like Mary Beth) her password would be 5557779999Mary_Beth. Case does not matter in passwords. I can email you your gallery password if you can't get it. There may be some rare instances where I do have your swimmer's photos but I edited incorrectly and assigned somebody else's password to those photos. I would need to correct that on my end and re-upload those photos to get it working. If a random swimmer is appearing in your gallery it's a password issue that I need to fix on my end. Email me about it Sam@swimmeetphotos.com.
Q: Does the reservation fee apply to my order?
A: Yes it does and reservation credits do not expire.
Q: How many pictures of my swimmer will you take?
A: As many as I can possibly get. My goal is to get a gallery of photos that tells the story of your swimmers races and meet. I've produced galleries with 20ish photos (swimmer swam ONE 25 freestyle) up to 800 photos (prelims and finals for multiple events at a 4 day meet).
Q: Will you photograph every swimmer on a relay? I want to make a team gift for them.
A: I only get action pictures of swimmers who have paid a reservation fee. Other relay teammates will appear in cheering shots along side your swimmer, but they will not be the focus of the photos. If you want action shots of every swimmer on a relay, every swimmer needs to be signed up. Do note that relays are the worst races to get action shots because there are 4x as many swimmers per heat and I will still photograph multiple lanes on relays. If you need action shots of all swimmers on a relay for a team gift I encourage you to get their parents to sign up their swimmer for individual events as well.
Q: I want to sign my swimmer up but they're very shy. Can you be discrete?
A: Yes, I can avoid certain angles like getting near them behind the blocks before the race, and not shooting head-on for butterfly, breastroke, or as they come off the wall for backstroke. I can't guarantee that they won't see me, but it will greatly reduce the chances. I typically do not talk to the swimmers I'm photographing unless they're chatty. I typically do not pose swimmers unless we discuss getting a quick posed shot.
Q: How long does it take for you to post a meet and how will I know when the images are online?
A: For small prelims-only meets it's usually a day of editing per day of meet. For large LSC Championship meets it's 2-3 days of editing per day of meet.
Q: There's another kid in my gallery. What do?
A: I made a mistake in editing and I'll fix it. Just email me. Sam@swimmeetphotos.com. I edit as carefully as I can and my accuracy is probably around 99%. Sometimes when you're looking at 55,000 photos your eyes start to gloss over and mistakes get made. It takes 2 min not to make a mistake and 1 hour to fix it, so I try as hard as I can to get the edit right the first time but I'm not perfect.
Q: What do you sell?
A: Full resolution digital files (in any quantity), gallery Buy-Alls (every photo in the gallery) and collage digital files. With the digital file you can make prints anywhere at any size. The files are 45 megapixels.
Q: What's the deal with the sale after the meet?
A: After I post a meet I run a 15% off sale that spans 2 weekends for small meets and 3 weekends for large meets. That 15% off sale is the only time the photos will be 15% off. The galleries stay online for 8 weeks from the last day of the meet. I send out an email when the sale starts.
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