Shooting Team Photos

Hello everyone welcome back. This probably is one of the basic things or the first thing you must know when you are into team photography or youth sports photography, is to know properly how to shoot and deliver good quality team shots.

I know this technique can be learn by oneself without proper training but there are a few rules I wanna share with you guys that would make it easier for you when shooting team photography.

Now, in youth sports photography, the first thing you should probably do is communicate first with the coaches and staffs of the team, and there are times that the parents, uncles and aunties will come over and assist you on helping the kids to behave and pose-up properly for the pictorial. This is very time consuming on your part and best for you to do is be in charge and set the guidelines first before shooting the photos.

Team photography may vary from one team to another. My set up usually involves 2 rows only but if the team is really big, I make it into 3 rows. The first row is where you want it properly delivered, (these is the front row seats as they say and you wanna make it really look good coz this is the part where team photos are noticed at). What I do is i have the shorter ones on the first row; where one leg kneels down (leg must be straight to give best posture of the player) and both hands are together or on top of each other on the other leg (this gives a serious and more professional look of the team). And for the second row, the tall ones get to occupy the middle and descends accordingly and equally from left to right. For the coaches and staff I usually put them on the sides coz they don’t smile most of the times (before we see them on the middle of the team, front row seats right?).

By the way, one more thing that I do is I set the first row on an even number and the second row as an odd number because this gives more emphasis to the players in the back (you want to try to avoid the heads of the front row players to stand in vertical with the heads on the second row). With this set up you get a more accurate and nice looking team photography of the people on the back.

Next is that, you can place some of the teams accessories like baseball gloves, pom-poms or a basketball ball on the players on the 1st row seats to make the team’s photograph really stand out as a team. Avoid shooting where there’s an imbalance on the teams player like for example one player has a sun visor or a cap, best that you have everyone one wear one or everyone removes it coz it will look funny if only one player is wearing one.

And finally, take about 5 to 6 shots of the team to get that perfect shot you want, because you can never tell and make one shot perfect. There would be times when you have someone blinking or not properly smiling that’s why.

I hope this has been useful again guys, I’ll see you again next time. Thanks for reading along.