What’s this all about then?
R&R has dramatically improved the concept of event-side photography. A few years ago a rider would finish an event and then go home, and over the next few days visit numerous different sites, waiting for them to upload, and then scanning through thousands of tiny thumbnails trying to remember what colour they were wearing in a vane hope of spotting themselves. R&R has changed that.
Since the launch of its photo section in 2011, R&R has grown to over 1,000 photographers. Over 4 million photos have been uploaded, and over 100,000 photos have been sold.
What’s different about this site that makes it work so well then?
The best user experience before R&R for event photos was Facebook. Why? The ability to tag people makes finding photos of yourself that much easier. Often you don’t even need to find them yourself, someone else will have recognised you and tagged you. The catch is… you can only be tagged by your friends, and you can only tag someone if you recognise them.
R&R has a trick up its sleeve though… results. Or to put it more bluntly, a list of every rider and their corresponding bib number
. Allowing ANYONE to tag ANYONE, simply by being able to read the bib number on their bike.
Facebook is also a poor choice for photographers with crippling limits on number of photos per album, and no purchasing ability built in. R&R has no limits, a simple sales mechanism and will work hard to accommodate each photographer’s specific needs.
Hold on though, who’s going to tag all of these photos?
Everyone. The process has been made as simple as possible. In most cases you can see a rider’s numberboard, and it’s simply a case of tapping that information in, hitting enter, and then the next photo comes up. Once you get the hang of it you can easily do 30+/minute - more if you have burst shots as you can tag a whole burst in one go. Additionally if you can’t see the board but recognise the rider you can use their name, or you can even try their sponsor if you recognise the kit and think the name will come to you once you see who rides for them.
With just a small fraction of the riders at any given event tagging a handful of photos each, almost every easily-identifiable photo gets tagged. Don’t hesitate to help - the users are essential to keeping this a continued success and making countless pages of un-searchable thumbnails a thing of the past.
In an ideal world, the photographer would tag every photo. In reality its too much work for one person. As an ex-event-photographer myself I’ve been down this route, and I know that initial enthuasim leads to tagging burnout after a few events!
How do the riders find their photos once tagged?
Trivially. They can just navigate to their rider page on the site - e.g. here's Sam Blenkinsopp's page. Additionally riders can (and do) sign up for email alerts so that they get a notification when a new photo of theirs is tagged.
What’s in it for the photographers?
Massively increased sales. Riders don’t want to hunt through countless thumbnails trying to remember what they were wearing. Even those who do look will miss quite a few. Sign up and find out, there’s nothing to pay so you’ve nothing to lose by giving it a go.
