[Closed] rootsandrain photos, who buys them?

I have done, thought not for a bit, as I haven't raced for a while.

Yeah, sometimes. Or maybe if there's a good pic of my kids.

No one else ever takes pics of me on my bike so yeah.

If they are any good ones our daughter buys hers, plenty to go at, 1041 of her at the moment. 28 of me which I haven bought any.

I've bought two of my son's.

I usually have a look like I've a wasp in my helmet when they take the pic...

Me and my OH have some good shots from races we've done from R&R.

me!

id like to buy them all tbh but dont as you have to get them from each photographer which works out expensive.

Maybe 1 in 200-300 if it's particularity dynamic pic of me (unlikely) or kids (more likely). Some of them are printed and on my wall.

I always tend to buy 1 or 2 from each event.
Some of them are amazing shots, so they earned it.

We're always too busy riding to take shots normally, so it's nice to have a record.

done two events and bought probably 5 pics from each. I like it and can add them to instagram/stava etc Often look great and i appreciate the photographers work. Its hard to get good riding photos of you so take the opportunity while its there!

Yep. +1 for what AlexSimon said.

Yup, I've bought about 10 or so over the years. Mostly from trail centre photographers outside of events though. If they are good, it's nice to have and keep for memories (and show off how (un)gnar I am).

I was looking forward to buying pictures from my first race the other month, all the pics of me were rubbish...

Me - as above, it takes a pro to make middle aged slow blokes look like not so slow middle aged blokes! 🙂

Me, occasionally. But I develop and own the site, so I guess I'm biased...

TBH photographers are always happy to let me have my shots for free, but I still buy them sometimes to make the point that I think it's a Really Fvcking Good Shot and they deserve to shut up and take my money 😀

I know this thread is young, but nice to see so many positive responses.

The site has come under fire a bit for large numbers of poor-quality photos from some of the younger/lesser photographers that upload.

Rest assured, I am on the case. In the last couple of days I've been learning about and implementing machine learning computer vision algorithms to help me notify the photographers when the site thinks their papping is a bit... pap.

See more here:

Cheers all,

Seb
www.rootsandrain.com

I do... i'll get a collection or two from most events I do (mostly enduro.. XC events rarely have the most 'fun' shots, but i have bought a few XC photos)..
It's only 3 pintsworth, and much better for you!

DrP

Well I misread that and wondered why on earth anyone would want to buy photos of root intrusion in sewers.

Glad to see people generally think positively about it all and like getting their photos taken. I am a rider and photographer and have just started uploading photos so was curious to see what the response would be.

Me occasionally!

View this post on Instagram

Yeah, I've bought a few photos - the ones from the MacAvalanche are fantastic *even* with my lardy arse hogging up a sizeable chunk of them.

Yep regular buyer here...

more photos = better.

a crap one might be good in my eyes.

either way its great and were all hitting refresh after an event to see how rubbish we look

I largely agree Andy, a photo might be technically terrible, but if it catches "that moment" where you had your race-ruining crash, or sent the drop for the only time all weekend... then it can have some value.

But more and more photographers are signing up, taking huge burst shots (I have a plan for this as well...) of poorly-exposed out-of-focus photos, and it's starting to take its toll. Not on the servers (30TB and counting*), but on the purchaser. No-one REALLY wants to have to go through 85 photos after an event, especially if there's only really 16 "separate" shots, and the others are all just rubbish bursts.

So I'm tackling it two-fold. Persuading photographers to prune their upload rather than "card dumping", and combining burst photos into animated thumbnails <click to expand burst> etc etc.

Hopefully one or the other of these enhancements will see the light of day by the end of the month!

* at some point I need to admit to myself that keeping 4 million photos going back a decade is RIDICULOUS when 95%+ of sales are for photos less than a month old... but I'm a hoarder.

I've bought a few. Used to be, less photos was better because it was so damn nearly impossible to find yourself in people's event photos but RnR makes it simple as long as they've tagged right. At least one of the pics I've bought was actually pretty amateurish but it caught the moment which is just as important.

Yeah I've bought some in the past but not all of them. Tend to look through and pick the best. A few were rubbish from Ard Rock but some are up on my wall and are fab. It's rare to get a photo of me riding as I'm too busy riding and so are the people with me so it makes a nice change.

I've bought some but don't do relevant events much.

While @downhiller is here can I suggest that the way results are shown is changed. It seems a shame that the women (who tend to be only say 10 to 20 riders are put right at the bottom and you have to scroll past everyone to get to the results. The other way round would barely register for the men.
Or at least put Elite women at the top above or below Elite men as befits their status?

Sometimes. I tend to go for the cheaper ones and / or those that do bulk discounts, unless it's a one off really good one.

Not that pictures of my riding is anything to look at but as said, no one else takes them.

Though the best photo I've got is also the same shot of another thousand people at Ard Rock, same photographer and location 😄.

Very rare shots show I actually have weels off the ground so they're worth something to me. Though they always come out with me looking down, not ahead.

And yeah, wading through burst shots to find one that's good is a pain. Take one shot per rider or burst and pick one. Though it's more effort when shooting a big event.

Another one who has purchased a few photos. Some have been rootsandrain. I think my fave photo of me was by them. I have the look of a young geex in action LOlZ

While @downhiller is here can I suggest that the way results are shown is changed. It seems a shame that the women (who tend to be only say 10 to 20 riders are put right at the bottom and you have to scroll past everyone to get to the results. The other way round would barely register for the men.
Or at least put Elite women at the top above or below Elite men as befits their status?

It kinda seems obvious to me that more men race, so more men are looking at results, and more people are interested in the men's results, so put them at the top.

To put the women's at the top feels like positive discrimination to me.

And to mix them in is—I think—a mistake as it means it becomes faffy to compare (say) senior women to elite women.

I think the best option would be to have a setting so users can choose which comes first, M or F. Dead simple to implement as well, I'm surprised I've not thought of it before.

Yay/nay?

Nothing wrong with a bit of positive discrimination to the minority. If you are looking for yourself you go in by name but for me anyway if I'm looking for National or WC results for example I'm generally looking for Elite men and women but finding the women is a multi button press. Press ctrl/end then scroll up for a bit in national events. They just seem to get lost in the mass of results.

Hot off the press:

https://www.rootsandrain.com/settings

They'll still be separate I'm afraid, not mixed in, but you can choose to put them at the top if you prefer 🙂

Downhiller - your hoarding of old photos is actually quite useful. All the family race, and I finally got round to a catch up for a photo book at Christmas. RnR made it really easy to scroll back 3 or 4 years so we now have a permanent record of the kid's progress.

The lap time data also lets us track them getting ever faster whilst we are in slow decline..... 🙂

Keep up the good work - in just a few years it has become quite a powerful database.

@downhiller I totally agree its a pain to see a lot of burst photos that havent been checked properly before being uploaded to the site which dont feature the rider or are WAAAY out of focus.

I upload my card into my computer and skim through the photos first before uploading to the site but keep multiple photos of the same bursts because its always subjective as to what of the 3 or 4 photos i took of the rider are going to be there favorite. Like i say im just new to this game so I will make an extra effort to make sure I only upload what i would buy.

No reason not to buy them if you like the photos, and I think photos are nice to have, so that you can grow old and grey and look back. Your kids can look back. Your grandchildren... Photos are great.

If price is an issue, just try to remember that these photographers spend thousands on kit and you might have half a dozen at any one event. Then all the images have to be processed and tagged. All the work that goes into the site. Etc. It's a few quid at the end of the day. You could get a couple of pints instead but you'll probably just regret them in the morning.

@downhiller if you're taking suggestions it would be great to be able to select a limit amount of riders in a race to compare their times directly.

i.e. click on all my mates in a race and just be able to see their times rather than having to scroll up and down to compare

Love Roots and Rain btw, seriously damages my work productivity on the Monday morning after a race

Yeah I often buy if they are good photos. One time events like Ard Rock were great as I won’t ride that a lot so nice to keep a snap.
It’s always race photos for me. Like a lot of people I don’t make time for taking photos generally as I’m always just out riding

I've bought some.

I've also taken some at a fairly niche event and uploaded them as a way of sharing them. Some even bought them!

n.b. Much love for R&R from me. Love the combination of results conglomeration and race photos. However watching the margin between the fasted rider and myself increasing as times go in is a bit depressing 😭

I often buy pics of either me or the Mrs racing as it’s nice to have a record, especially if I don’t look too red faced or technically inept in them.

I'd say Roots and Rain is a real sucess and one of the few established sites in cycling that works.
Everyone I know that rides events has been on the site to check photos, results & nemisis'.
Congrats @Downhiller !

Please keep the legacy stuff too. Would be a shame to lose all that history.

@downhiller if you’re taking suggestions it would be great to be able to select a limit amount of riders in a race to compare their times directly.

i.e. click on all my mates in a race and just be able to see their times rather than having to scroll up and down to compare

Love Roots and Rain btw, seriously damages my work productivity on the Monday morning after a race

Funny you should say that... I started putting this in ages ago; as it stands it works for ME... after a race I often click on my secret button that doesn't get shown to anyone else and it gives me a table of the dozen or so people at the race I care about showing how we all fared... Definitely something I need to polish more and roll out!!

Watch this space, as they say.

I love roots and rain , when I started racing enduros I would buy all the photos of myself but in the last few years there are way more photos from each event so I’m a bit choosier now .

please keep all the old events up , nowhere else has that info and it would be a shame for it to disappear

I really like Roots and Rain, I miss my days of deeply mediocre racing. I bought quite a few pics - the only time I'm ever caught looking fast!

I’m about to buy some from an enduro race from earlier this year. Seb as you’re reading this, I have the same name as a previous rider so my record seems to have merged with someone else (not me just fortunate enough to have the same great name 😆) - anyway to split this?

I fairly regularly buy shots on there.

@downhiller interesting to hear you're working on improving some of the quality. I've seen quite a few totally out of focus/poorly framed burst shots but doesn't bother me too much scrolling through.

What's a shame is it does see that a few photographers do seem to focus on quantity rather than quality. Too often the positions the photographers setup at make it look like a casual ride in the woods with no features or dynamism in the riders, then just click away for hours.

At one race I went to (sadly not on R&R) a photographer turned up who was insanely good. He maybe only took a couple of hundred photos but I ended up buying way more than normal, including one that was just a shot of my muddy cranks, a portrait shot (which is now on my business card) as well as riding shots.

Event photography is hard (I've done some mtb races so know it's tough), but I guess my point is - people will buy any old photos the first few races they do, but to keep people coming back and purchasing over and over for years you really do need the quality to be there.

Also (and I can think of many reasons why you wouldn't want to do this) what about tiered photographer levels? So maybe Pro, Amateur and Spectator.

Make it easy to filter by tier, and Pro tier can only be achieved by manual approval.

Spectator tier would be to encourage the random people taking photos/videos on their phones to upload them somewhere people can see them rather than maybe putting them on the Facebook event page, but more often than not just never seeing the light of day.

@downhiller I'd give you a thumbs up but can't get the site to work this morning :0(

I’m about to buy some from an enduro race from earlier this year. Seb as you’re reading this, I have the same name as a previous rider so my record seems to have merged with someone else (not me just fortunate enough to have the same great name 😆) – anyway to split this?

Very easily Stu, just drop me an email or facebook message and I'll get it sorted for you. Happens all the time, as you can imagine.

I buy them when I do an event, which is rare.

A fantastic resource keep up the good work @downhiller

Also (and I can think of many reasons why you wouldn’t want to do this) what about tiered photographer levels? So maybe Pro, Amateur and Spectator.

Make it easy to filter by tier, and Pro tier can only be achieved by manual approval.

Spectator tier would be to encourage the random people taking photos/videos on their phones to upload them somewhere people can see them rather than maybe putting them on the Facebook event page, but more often than not just never seeing the light of day.

I hadn't thought of calling the bottom tier spectator - that's much better than "Awful" which is what I was going to go with 😉 Other than that, a tiered system is already planned... Just have to be careful not to offend/alienate people who believe they should be in a higher tier. So I think it mainly needs to be algorithmic, rather than down to MY judgement...

@downhiller I’d give you a thumbs up but can’t get the site to work this morning :0(

My fault, I've just run kernel updates and reboots on the 3 servers it runs on. Back up now, phew. Always a sweaty moment!

@downhiller I absolutely love the site. It is so interesting to compare various metrics after a race and track positioning in the pack change over a number of years. The way that you have integrated photos is also fantastic.
As somebody above has already said, the Monday after an event is not always very productive at work.

Thank you for setting up, running and always improving the site. It just works.

I did recently, but then the cash was going to the charity that the event was supporting.

The photos were great, but not because I was looking good!

I usually buy at least one from each race. They can be pretty expensive individually at times but I like the bulk buy option that was recently introduced... though they can be full of burst shot images.

I like to support the photographers seeing as they spend all day or all weekend standing about, sometimes in terrible conditions too!

One suggestion, and I don't know if it's possible as I'm presuming the photographers set their prices, but it would be good if after a period of time, say 1 year or 2, the prices of older photos went down. I doubt anyone wants to pay £7 for a 3 year old photo, but if it dropped to something like £2, some people might buy it for old times sake.

i've bought a few, always good to see a picture in action, was just showing my mates a boltby bash picture from last year, when i skirted around a jump, hopefuly this years shot will be a bit more stylish .

the only improvement i think would be to enable those unknown pictures (hidden numberplates) to be viewed in order (before and after pics) as the majority of enduro riders, ride with friends and so if you knew who was riding before or after you, it is more likely to get tagged by a friend, as they'l see their pics and click forward to a friends..

Is there a way to tag yourself in photos on Roots and Rain? There's loads of me from my last two events that are tagged by number only and it's a pain to try and find them again.

I used to, then I did loads more racing and there were so many, most of which were really average (not necessarily as photos, but they were just me on a fireroad) that I stopped, and only bought ones which were either really good photos or had a special memory.

As an aside, [url= https://www.rootsandrain.com/rider74184/nick-evans-mas/photos/ ]my Roots & Rain profile[/url] isn't exclusively mine! The results and the photos are half me and half someone else! @downhiller I don't mind, I know which are me, and I guess it's purely a product of having a common name, but thought I'd mention! I'm the (former) XC racer, not the enduro/DH one! That makes me look awful too, I wish you had older results in there when I wasn't quite so bad!

[url= https://www.rootsandrain.com/photos/1016009 ]Me[/url]. [url= https://www.rootsandrain.com/photos/2191005 ]Not me[/url].

As a few others, yep I would but tend to race rarely these days due to life getting in the way. Also as a few others, no-one else takes pics of me riding so there's an added bonus. Really though a lot depends on the photographer's timing, placement, skill and vision. I'm realistic and no-one is going to make me look like a riding god, but it would be nice not to look like it should be in the crashreel, and some togs are very much better than others.

The best understand they are doing environmental portraiture and generally produce stunning work, and then there's the chancers blasting away on auto fire hoping to make a few pennies who would be knackered if the camera wasn't doing all the work for them.

Clearly I'm not a photographer - but I find that with Kevin Sheldrake (as in the picture of "me" I linked to) - there are about 15 photos of me on R&R, all by him, and they're virtually all in different states of blurry/out of focus. I get they're low-res versions, and I'm sure the higher resolution ones are crisper, but I'm not sure I'd have ever bought most of his pictures!

Clearly I’m not a photographer – but I find that with Kevin Sheldrake (as in the picture of “me” I linked to) – there are about 15 photos of me on R&R, all by him, and they’re virtually all in different states of blurry/out of focus. I get they’re low-res versions, and I’m sure the higher resolution ones are crisper, but I’m not sure I’d have ever bought most of his pictures!

Kevin certainly likes his panning shots, and I guess they're not to everyone's taste. They're generally quite good though, but who knows, maybe you've got a bad bunch. Feel free to email or facebook me and I can look at them for you and advise what the full-res files are like, if you want.

Ive bought two both of my son , Handy for sending to my mum and dad etc.

[IMG] [/IMG]

Funny to search back on Roots and rain and seeing the legendary and much missed Stevie Smith hammering down Innerleithen.

As an aside, my Roots & Rain profile isn’t exclusively mine! The results and the photos are half me and half someone else! @downhiller I don’t mind, I know which are me, and I guess it’s purely a product of having a common name, but thought I’d mention! I’m the (former) XC racer, not the enduro/DH one! That makes me look awful too, I wish you had older results in there when I wasn’t quite so bad!

Me. Not me.

Fixed!

Great site, I buy shots. One photographer kindly photoshopped my arse out where my shorts had dropped a smidge. Now if they can sort the beer belly in the photos it’d be perfect.

One suggestion, and I don’t know if it’s possible as I’m presuming the photographers set their prices, but it would be good if after a period of time, say 1 year or 2, the prices of older photos went down. I doubt anyone wants to pay £7 for a 3 year old photo, but if it dropped to something like £2, some people might buy it for old times sake.

Not a bad idea at all, I'll add it to the list...!

the only improvement i think would be to enable those unknown pictures (hidden numberplates) to be viewed in order (before and after pics) as the majority of enduro riders, ride with friends and so if you knew who was riding before or after you, it is more likely to get tagged by a friend, as they’l see their pics and click forward to a friends..

On the event thumbnail pages there's an "order by" setting at the top, where you can select "Taken (oldest first)" to put them all into chronological order.

That doesn't fully give you what you want though, as you'd have to scan through all of the many thousands of thumbnails to find the right point to look backwards/forwards from.

What it needs instead is "previous photo" and "next photo" buttons on the photo page itself. This is something I used to have, I'm not really sure why I don't any more. There was a reason... performance I think, but I can't think why it'd have been a problem. I'll try to reinstate today!

Is there a way to tag yourself in photos on Roots and Rain? There’s loads of me from my last two events that are tagged by number only and it’s a pain to try and find them again.

I assume you weren't listed on the results for some reason? I do wish organisers would put EVERYONE who signs on on the results, even if they don't start the actual race.

I'm afraid only the person who tagged originally, or myself, or the photographer, can change tags. Why? Well there's no login system for regular users is there, the site has never asked you for a username or password... and with no login system there's no way to keep track of who's doing what. And with no way to keep track of who's doing what, there's nothing to stop a malicious user from changing 100,000 tags overnight!

So, for the time being, you'll have to just drop me an email with the name of the event, your name and your numberboard, and I'll sort it out! seb@rootsandrain.com

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One suggestion, and I don’t know if it’s possible as I’m presuming the photographers set their prices, but it would be good if after a period of time, say 1 year or 2, the prices of older photos went down. I doubt anyone wants to pay £7 for a 3 year old photo, but if it dropped to something like £2, some people might buy it for old times sake.

Not a bad idea at all, I’ll add it to the list…!

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Awesome, cheers!

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