Thank you for a great tutorial. I am doing a wrestling team on Wednesday and will do my best to get them lined up according to your tutorial so I can have a go at this.
Scott... first off, great concept. I love what you have done here. I would be interested in seeing if the final print though would work with the underexposure. I'm thinking a little skim light on those faces might perk it up even more. Still though... nice job here.
To answer your question... for a league of 50, I wouldn't do it. It's not cost efficient. Plus, we deal with a lot of little kids in our team photos and just getting them to stand still for 8-12 shots is a task. I'm not sure they would be at the age where they would appreciate the creativity, nor would the parents. My philosophy about large league T&I is different from school team photography. Whereas in school teams, it offers an opportunity to be creative, youth sports T&I photography is more about getting teams in and out as efficiently as possible, even at the price of cookie cutter photographs. As I often said, league T&I pays the bills and affords the opportunity to flex some originality with team photos at the school level where getting a team or two in an hour is very doable.
As a rule, I don't step out of my box too much with league photo day. Been there done that. For me it's a matter of choice... what do I want? A league of half the parents that love the "new' look balanced out by the other half that hate it? Or a league of parents down the middle who don't have passion either way and would rather just add it to the long line of pre existing photos over the years? I have to take the latter. I don't want to, but I HAVE to. That's the business.
Incredible tutorial. Used it for a couple of team pics and, despite my woefully inadequate PS skills, they turned out OK. That would not have happened without the level of detail present in the tutorials. Also, thanks to whomever put it into a PDF. Lifesaver.
