No good deed goes unpunished...

The title of your post says it all. ... yes you are missing something.

* Never post anything on the internet like that unless it is a password protection site.

* Unfortunately, you must tell people UP FRONT what you are doing and have them sign a release. If they don't want to sign the release, don't take any photos.

Too bad society is going in that direction

Flickr offers a solution to making private images viewable by selected people. It's called a Guest Pass.
http://www.flickr.com/help/sharing/

I really don't understand why a gift of photos would include your logo and copyright info. It doesn't protect them from anything.

This is, without fail, due to ignorance (well, and some bad manners). To the extent that the average Jane or Joe know anything about copyrights, they have made a complete mental hash of it. Combine that with the fact that many young parents (or hockey players) are of the age where they've personally pirated much of their own music collection for "free" off of the internet, and you begin to understand why none of it matters to them until it in some way inconveniences them, or involves something that's important to them personally (shots of their kids, or of that spectacular check they made during the game).

The sense of entitlement to entertainment and creative works is getting worse by the moment. I find, now, that my best customers are those who - in their own daily lives - also produce and create things. They get it. Those who earn their livings in less creative ways are so detached from the concepts and costs (in time, equipment, and education) that they can't wrap their heads around why an artist or skilled professional would want to protect their work ... and because it's not important to them, they've never bothered to take five minutes to understand the practicalities and customs/legalities surrounding the issue. They just want stuff, and they want it on their terms.

So: the biggest challenge facing the photographer in this situation (and, Ty, I've been in exactly those situations, more than once - my fatal flaw is being an optimist, and always giving the next person the benefit of the doubt) is to educate the audience. In advance.

Sometimes, I'm able to adequately do that by simply putting up a splash page with some well-tuned prose that the visitor sees before they wander into whatever gallery I've put up. Sometimes I make the viewing of the gallery contingent on a "yeah, I understand that the photographer is simply protecting his work" button. Yes, most people just click such things reflexively, but it provides for something to refer back to in later conversations. Not in a "gotcha!" sort of way, but in the sense that the crass, real-world issues of rights and licensing and costs have aready been put out on the table. It takes some of the social discomfort out of broaching the topic, later.

In a social situation, I sometimes use a buffer. The host of the event, for example, gets a solid education on where the boundaries and obligations are, and then I allow that person to field some of the more wildly off-the-mark expectations from the other attendees. I've actually heard a person in that role say, "Yeah, he'll charge you for some prints if you want 'em, and might be a good sport and let you use some copies just for emailing to family and stuff, but do me a favor, OK? He's here as a favor to me, not as a favor to you, so no fair asking him for free stuff for yourself." Half the battle is just arming your friends with some words and concepts they can use when they talk to their friends.

It can also help to use an analogy. If you had a friend over to a dinner party, and your friend was a professional chef who offered to help prepare an apetizer as a favor to you, would the other guests be comfortable asking if he'd also come by their house and cook their breakfast the next morning, or write down all of his recipes and e-mail them around? Whether or not an analogy like that is perfect, it can stop the clueless leeches long enough to get them to think. Without that effort up front, most of them don't get past the part where they also "know how" to take a picture and put it on Flicker, so what's the big deal?

I have shot a few amateur sporting events and never made a dime from print sales to competitors. After each event about 10 people ask me to email them full resolution shots. No athlete has ever offered me money. I even had one of the shots printed in a magazine so they were pretty good.

Did I care? Not at all. I expected nothing and got nothing except for the magazine usage.

I did it because I thought it would be fun and it was. I've shot friend's kid's birthday parties and just burned everything to a CD and gave it to them. Let them handle the website.

If you want to shoot for money then shoot for money and spell everything out in a contract, get model releases, etc. If you want to shoot for free then shoot for free. Mixing the two worlds by shooting for free then trying to make money from prints or adding copyright logos to birthday party pics is just going to confuse and annoy people.

When you say you shot the birthday party as a gift what is your definition of a gift? Mine is take the pics, burn to CD, and let them do whatever they want. If you're going to enforce your copyright and not allow them to make prints then it is a gift with strings attached. I personally would not want such a gift. If the gift is here's the pics and do whatever you want then why did you even put the watermark/copyright on the kids pics in the first place?

[[I was asked to shoot this event and I thought: “here’s a great opportunity to work on my action/sports shooting with my long lenses in controlled light and get great access to the ice”]]

So, it was a trade: images for access. Seems reasonable. Take the access and the experience gained and give the people their images.

[[and we thought as part of our gift to them we’d both shoot the party so they could focus on their kids and still get some great memories. We had no intention of getting paid for anything, we were just trying to do something special for them]]

A gift. Not a sale. Why would you plaster your logo and copyright info on a gift? The OP defined the terms for himself and then decided to change the terms later. This makes no sense.

Ty,
I agree with Rob on this one. The 2 situations are entirely different. The first was arranged ahead of time and you should have had some sort of written agreement including a release so that you could use the images for your own promotion, etc. as well as spelling out the terms.
The birthday party is different. Next time you just show up and shoot unannounced, just burn a CD of what you'd like them to have and hand it to them. If they want to post them, they can do it on their own on any number of sites. It sounds like you gave them a "gift" as a friend and were looking to sell prints. Not right, not fair and not nice....-Aimee

This kind of situation made me stop doing "favors" with my cameras. I now shoot for my own satisfaction and offer any shots of other people directly to them. I generally don't charge money either... unless they want enlargements, then it is "at cost". But when I don't know them (or they look richer than me) I tell them a reasonable price and my attitude is 'take it or leave it' with very little discussion of why that is the price or the legality of me shooting the pics in the first place. No complaints yet and many requests, especially from other parents of kids on the same baseball/track/basketball team(s) with my kids (which I more often than not decline).

I have a couple of theories about "complaints" in these situations:
1. shooting in situations where one is not generally acknowledges to be the "team photographer", "hired pro" (even if 'hired' is not interpreted literally), etc; 2. posting to a public site for the convenience of all; and 3. not discussing price up-front (including "free" and "gift").

I just don't do these... the hassle isn't worth it.

But here's a little story to warm your heart. A few years ago a friend was throwing a blow-out sweet-16 party for their daughter. They didn't want to pay the price of a pro so called me and offered $300 plus film plus processing (which they would provide). I generally don't work like that because it makes me feel like a prostitute and I want to cull boo-boos, etc. But the deal was too good and I needed a few dollars so I shot the event - 5 hours of work plus a really good meal. The only embarassing part was that I was invited to sit at the head table (which was very nice offer but not really feasable) and my flash misfired when just as the birthday girl blew out the candles on the cake. At the end of the event I gave the parents the bag of film that I shot plus all of the leftover (prior to the event they asked me what I wanted for film and then provided large quantity of everything I asked for). They gave me a check for $200. I didn't have the heart to say something like "didn't we agree on $300?" A couple of weeks after the event I started getting phone calls and email messages from them. They raved about the pictures and offered to have my family over to dinner so we could look them over. We were never able to do that but the calls/compliments continued for several months. That alone was worth the "missing $100." The difference between my story and yours, in my opinion, is that these folks had a bad memory... but class. For people like them I do it over and over and over again!

"I took about 4500 shots of the games"

Yikes! I usually walk about with about 200 images when I shoot a basketball game.

Yikes! I usually walk about with about 200 images when I shoot a basketball game.

This is really not what the post is about, however - he said he shot over three nights in a championship series, so who knows how many games, he did team shots, he shot an after-event, and he shot a sport that generally moves faster than basketball and is harder to follow.

Reading carefully is a wonderful thing. Also, understanding market requirements really helps.

BTW, SI shoots more than 16,000 frames for one football game every year.

On the original topic, Rob offers good advice.