Shooting Star's client streak to end after 10-plus years

A special streak will sadly come to a close for Shooting Star Sports Photography on Friday night. For the first time since the launch of our one-of-a-kind, groundbreaking service more than 10 years ago, we will not have a high school football client to photograph. The streak, which began with us photographing Gary Friedman of the Garces High Rams in September 1999, ends after more than 100 consecutive weeks.


Garces High's Gary Freidman was our first high school football
client in 1999, and launched a streak of more than 100
consecutive Friday nights with at least one client. We were
shooting film back then.


Utilizing nearly 60 combined years of daily photojournalism experience, unparalleled ability to make photographs in the most difficult lighting conditions and customer service resulting in a nearly 100 percent repeat customer rate, Shooting Star photographers have produced more than 1,000 custom portfolios for more than 400 clients during the past decade. Our portfolios are deeply personal stories documenting a special time in an athlete's life, far more evolved than just a collection of routine action photographs. Until this season, we've averaged 15 to 20 football clients, and had to turn away at least that many more because we could not keep up with the demand. This season we are photographing just five football players and do not anticipate adding any others.

While it would be easy to point a finger at the economy as the reason for the dramatic decline, we don't think that is the case. We are losing customers to amateur photographers. Virtually every local high school field is now saturated with amateur photographers each Friday night. These folks, often with cameras not equipped to handle the difficult shooting conditions presented by the poorly-lit fields the games are played on, are giving away pictures for free because they think it's cool. The pictures are awful, but "free" is a powerful phenomenon for even savvy and discerning parents to overcome. Others are purchasing pro-level equipment and with no experience are setting up photo businesses. They look the part, they have the gear, they have the vests (amateur photographers just love the photo vest!) but they can't shoot. One such photographer is offering his services at a "too-good-to-be-true" rate, and has lured several dozen clients to his service. The packages he is offering would be impossible for us to produce even with our years of experience; he has no experience and there are going to be some very disappointed parents pretty soon.

So it looks like our decade of word of mouth business, with little need to advertise or market, will have to make some adjustments. We'll be out there agressively marketing, and will soon regain our position as not a choice for sports photography in Bakersfield, but as the "only choice" for quality sports photography in Bakersfield. And despite the loss of football clients, we are still very close to our fall season projections; we have just moved on to other areas, including auto racing, tennis and water polo, where we have new clients making up for the lost football clients.

Our streak ended on one of the the fields that powered us the past 10 years, at Centennial High, where our clients were Garrett Hayslett (our third portfolio on Garrett and fourth overall for the Haysletts) and Cole Hallum (our second portfolio for Cole and fourth overall for the Hallum family.) We'll be back at Centennial on October 2 for the Hawks vs. Stockdale and hopefully the start of another 10-year streak.


Garrett Hayslett (above) and Cole Hallum were our athletes
last week. The lure of free or extremely low-cost photographs,
despite their poor quality, has affected us after 10 consecutive
sold out football seasons.


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