The following tips and tricks will help you to make a great Sportsbook. Simply click the section header to view information:
Photos and Text
Taking good action photos
Good photos help to make a great album, you can't take a bad photo and make it good.
Don't leave taking your photos until the last minute. Action shots can be hard to capture so it's best to take them over a period of time rather than relying on the last game of the match.
Great photos can be found before and after the game as well as in the midst of the action. Try to get action shots of individual team members and siupporters as these offer the snapshots that are personal to your team expereience.
Make sure your photo subject takes up a good portion of the photo, i.e. is not a speck in a large field.
Make sure photos are in focus. Although many great sports shots are made by moving the camera with the subject and thereby ending up with the subject in focus but the back ground out of focus.
Put the subject or action in the "thirds" grid line.
Portraits should not cut off part of the head. If you don't want to include full body, ensure you trim the body, limbs nicely cut of at the elbow or knees but not at the wrist or ankle.
Avoid using the flash - makes colours harsh and unreal.
Include eyes - the back of head does little to reflect the action or emotion.
Include the ball - generally results in great action.
Before and after the game - some great shots can come from interaction between players and coaches or supporters at these times. Emotions can be extreme making for great photos.
Consider alternative subjects, sports photos don't have to be just action shots of players the following also tend to paint great photo stories:
- Spectators and or supporter - they form part of the story and support the team so include them in the story.
- Coaches and managers - they are part of the team so include them in the story.
- Gear - as used by the players ( good cover photos).
- Non players - watch the player(s) who are not actually playing often their actions show interesting emotions.
- Referees - their gestures can reflect much emotion.
- Awards - cups medals etc.
Read up about the technical aspects of taking good sports photos, fast shutter speed, high ISO, positon your self for the action, shot from a low angle, fast focus and burst mode.
Take lots and lots of photos, it doesn't cost a cent to take photos with digital cameras these days and it will give you a greater range to select from when choosing those you want in you Sportsbook.
Choosing and submitting photos.
Be selective in choosing your best photos and those that when combined tell a full story.
Balance the number of photos across team members - successful or not so successful. This way all members can enjoy the book with their fair share of representation.
Remember that images of interaction between players and coaches or supporters reflect great emotion or provide more aspects of a story.
Resize and optimise photos before uploading, see section on photo files.
Use our downloadable PDF Checklist to assist you in preparing photos and captions before uploading.
Photo files.
Once you have selected the photos you want to submit for your book you might like to consider the following:
Use our downloadable PDF Checklist to assist you in preparing photos and captions before uploading.
Cropping - you may decide to crop the image to focus more on the subject before submitting.
Image size - to ensure a good quality image for the books it should be minimum 1200 to 1600 pixels wide, as this gives a good balance between picture quality and file size.
File size - keep your file size to 500 KB (0.5 Megabytes), this gives a good balance between quality and ensures reasonable time to upload to our server. Larger file can take much longer to upload.
Photo width in the range 1200 pixels - 1600 pixels at 72dpi - 300 dpi will gernally produce a file around 500 KB which will provide good print quality.
If you are cropping, straighting and resizing optimisiing do this before uploading to our server.
To process your images there are many free on or off line solutions available to you. Most digital cameras come with image processing software and can be loaded on to your computer.
If not try picassa as it gives many tools to manipulate your images and it is free to download it's export function will automatically allow you to resize images and optimise file size. Picassa is an ideal solution as it allows you to select and batch process the resizing of a batch of photos through it's export function. Steps in picassa to achieve this are as follows ( assuming your photos are catelogued in picassa):
- Select required photos within picassa by "starring" them. This puts them in a folder called starred.
- Then select all the photos in the starred folder.
- Select picassa's export function and in the dialog box which pops ups slect resize to "1200" or "1600" pixels wide.
If using 1200 wide - you can select to export at Maximum quality.
If using 1600 wide - use normal quality - otherwise file size will be too large to upload. - Finish the export.
- Then you can submit the resized photos for the export folder to our order form.
If you are having problems try the links below:
Text
When submitting any text for your Sportsbook consider the following:
Text is best kept brief and too the point, remember you have 200 characters per caption.
For example:
"David - Very quiet but showed enthusiasm on the diamond. Start coming into form in the game. We can't wait to see what he brings next season!"
You may want to include a list of team members, awards and results for the season as well as comments from players and coaches.
Some text can be included on the front cover but captions inside the book are an optional extra - see order form for more detail on this.
EndFAQ