I use a Nikon D5200 with a 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens primarily
I have a 50mm 1.8f lens and a 24mm 1.2f lens but I don't use them much because the D5200 cannot autofocus with them, which leads to tons of shots that I have to scrap due to the manual focus being off by a hair

I'm planning on upgrading my camera to get cleaner low-light shots before i55
If you'd like to help out here's a link where you can - https://www.patreon.com/thatguytagg

drunk indust is the best thing i've ever seen

Its a form of story boarding, a reference for what everything should look like before spending a ton of money animating it.

It also took me like, 5 years to notice KND had an actual plot behind it and it blew my mind

You're on badlands spire

Soldier jumps up to fight you

You do rocket jump to the skybox

Soldier lands on spire

You shoot rockets down at him from the skybox

A R R E S T E D
D E V E L O P M E N T

F I V E
G U Y S

Not possible in a million years

I didn't say it wasn't worth doing for an amount of time. I'm bringing up the larger issue of why the competition in Invite has been lacking for a few seasons, and why Froyo is such an issue right now.

After being in Invite for several seasons and having lots of friends in invite i can confirm that this is an issue that players are faced with.

The issue here is the amount of time you put into making LAN vs what you get out of it isn't equal in the slightest bit.
Sure making LAN a few times is fun, but you start to realize that you're losing hundreds of hours of your day and losing money going to every LAN just isn't worth it anymore. At some point in time real life is going to catch up to you and demand you do something better with that time, cause you can't pay the bills by playing TF2

Correct

It's an issue but it's not Froyos fault
In order to make LAN you have to put in massive amounts of hours into scrimming, practicing, going over strats and etc.You finally get there, try your hardest and you entertain the crowd. Then you get 3rd place, go up to get your winnings and find out you've barely made even after your travel expenses and food costs are added up.

The donation drives in the past got a bad rep fast but you can't expect players to invest all of this time so you can see a "good show" while they end up with the short end of the stick. I guarantee you, for every TF2 LAN that's been held, a "top competitive player" has ended losing money to go and entertain people. The time and effort these people put into the game isn't being respected

For my first ESEA LAN I placed 4th and made -$44 with my winnings. Not including food or shuttle/taxi expenses either. Its butts dude

I dunno, you can't really deny that froyo currently has the last few players in TF2 that have the most experience in the game. I've always said that I think the most interesting season of TF2 would happen when all of the oldest wisest TF2 players form their own teams and go against each other, but doing that wouldn't make sense.

Until TF2 gets a better prize pot, putting a ton of time into it isn't very possible for many people. Sure I agree that high level TF2 is more fun, but putting your blood and sweat into the game isn't really worth it these days. If I were to play on a team in the upcoming season my primary goal would be to play on a team with friends and have a good time, not to win LAN again. Considering that Froyo is made up of the players with the most experience in the game, they also have known each other for the longest time and are friends. There is really no reason for them not to play with each other, cause i know i wouldn't leave either in their shoes.

Sure the situation is kinda butts i guess, but you can't be mad at them really. If anything the real issue is the TF2 prize pot being too small currently. I'm drunk and im not proof reading this so pretty much, vets are gunna play with vets cause they're buddies. There will be no competition cause there is no incentive to put in the time to catch up to them. There was competition in the past because we believed TF2 was going somewhere, but now that things have stalled a bit the drive has died down

All good points.
The big issue with esports photography and photography in general today is that people ask their buddy with a camera phone or cheap point n shoot to get photos for free. Those photos end up being awful quality and they don't get distributed well.

Having good photos is a very important part of advertisement and publicity but unfortunately the market for this work is getting poopied on and its makin me real sad :(

Anyways, thanks for the replies.
I'll think about what i can come up with

So as some of you guys may know, I enjoy photography and would like to somehow do more of it.
Unfortunately this is a hard field to enter and make it in, I've already asked one esports org with no luck.

But I just thought of an idea and would like to hear what other people think.
I will be going to this upcoming ESEA LAN to provide coverage once again and was trying to think of a way to get there without losing money to go work. I don't like the idea of straight up asking for donations but a thought crossed my mind and this is what i wanna ask and get responses on.

What if, instead of working for an organization or event, instead I work for fans.
Fans could help send me to events to get photos and coverage of their favorite players, streamers and etc
I get to do work that I enjoy and hopefully people that are "hiring"(donating pretty much i guess) me get content they like.

TLDR - Its pretty much crowdfunding me to be a esports photographer
What are concerns, ideas, etc