The long tail of Larp photography
I still get approached regarding photos I took five years ago, in the pre-pandemic times. I’d say it happens every few months.
On the one hand it's nice to be asked and it is also evidence, were any needed, that the photographs have lasting value and are the main long term record (other than people’s memories) that a Larp took place.
On the other hand, it is weird to me that folk will assume they are entitled to have you act as archivist and librarian for old photos that they didn’t preserve at the time.
Demand for photos follows a curve. It starts immediately after the Larp ends, when the photographer has yet to do their edits, peaks with any quarantine & release process, and then tails off but never goes to zero - at least, not in my experience so far.
The shape of the curve over time very much reminds me of the of the long tail business model, a term coined by Chris Anderson and implemented by variety of internet based companies
I am increasingly of the view that my back catalogue of photographs needs to be available and searchable, online and for the long term, to cater to this long tail demand. Larp organizations may also have an interest in preserving the photos but Larp organizations come and go and many of them just don’t survive the aftermath of the specific event that they were put together to deliver. So, on balance, I also believe it is better for the photographer to arrange the long term solution themselves.
Unfortunately, online hosting has a cost. Sure, google will give you 15Gb of storage to play with but in the context of modern high-megapixel cameras and weekend Larps, where thousands of images can be taken - free online storage runs out very quickly. If you take photos regularly, this is not a long term solution.
Looking into solutions, I found two major models. The shorthand is they are either Advertiser supported (like youtube) or client supported (like patreon).
Advertising supported. The online storage is fairly plentiful and cheap but the hosting provider serves adverts amongst it - monetizing your content in other ways. So that the advertising content is seen by the widest number of people - galleries are unprotected and open to the world.
Client supported. Online storage is more frugal, but galleries can be configured to be private/shared only with those parties who attended the event. In this model, those with access pay for the particular content they want and that payment goes towards covering the hosting process.
While sharing ones photography with the world seems laudable, I am not sure the LARPers I would photograph would always find this acceptable. I am also not keen on a web-crawler harvesting images for an A.I.-bot to remix, repackage and attempt to present as an original work.
So if I launch an archival website it will follow a client supported model and there will be a nominal charge for downloading images or sending them to a print partner.