Each year I put a memory book together for the DeSales boys soccer team. This is a list of the items that I use to create the book and get it published and printed.
I take pictures at each games for both the JV and Varsity teams. The goal is to get at least 4 pictures of each player for each game. After you have that, you can either stop or continue shooting to try to get better pictures or possibly catch that “prefect shot”. Since everything is digital, I'm not afraid to take around 300-400 photos/game. You can always throw away what you don't want.
I'm not going to lie, taking action shots at home under the lights is not an easy task. To get somewhat decent photos, I use the following:
I use LightRoom Classic to edit and sort the photos. Any program can be used (Apple Photos), I just choose to use Lightroom Classic because it does a much better job of touching up photos in bulk and I feel does a better job of cleaning up ISO noise from the night time photos. The only down side to this is that you have to purchase a 1 year subscription to Adobe which is $99 or $120 ($9.99/month for 12 months with a cancellation fee if you cancel early).
I create 2 folders, one for JV and one for Varsity and then create an album for each individual game. For sorting, I normally go through all the photos and “reject” the bad ones (out of focus, have 10 of the same shot, ref stepped in front of the camera…). that normally omits about ½ of the photos right off the bat. After throwing out the really bad ones, I'll go back and look the the burst photos I took and pick out 1 or more of those and toss the rest.
Once I have narrowed it down to the keepers, I will go through and crop the photos (which Lightroom makes very easy, as you can copy the crop settings and apply them to 1 or more photos). For night games (Varsity), I will go through and touch-up the noise and adjust the white balance if I need to. For noise reduction, I will normally get that set for 1 photo and then apply that same setting to the entire batch.
This is the part everyone enjoys.
Once I have finished touching up all the photos, I will export them from Lightroom onto another drive as JPGs. From there, I have the flickr uploadr tool configured to monitor specific folders on my mac. Once it finds a new folder/photo, it will automatically create a new album in Flickr and upload all the photos from that directory into that folder. (This can be any site, dropbox, google photos, Prime photos, Shutterfly…. The reason I like Flickr is that I can store full res photos and retrieve the full res photos. I do have to pay for this service, but to me, it's worth it.)
Once the files are uploaded to Flickr (which takes 30min to an hour), I go in and make them public so everyone can access and download them. I will create a download link for the album and then publish that on the DeSales Boys Soccer Facebook page as well as share it out via team snap, so those that aren't on Facebook can see them.
To create the book, I use Affinity Publisher. I chose to use this program over the In Design, because again, you have to pay a monthly fee (and there aren't any plans with In Design and Lightroom).
After each game, I create a 2 page spread for each varsity game. This normally consists of 8-10 photos. I try to use photos of different players from game to game so all the varsity players have a chance to get their photos in the book. Doing this after each game helps to reduce the amount of work at the end of the season.
Make sure that you get several photos of the coaches and staff throughout the game. They also receive books, so it's nice to have pictures of them in the book as well. I also create a “Coaches” page with a photo of each of them.
Each player gets to choose 4-6 photos. I think in 2021, I am going to give all the non-senior players 2 pages (instead of 1) and the Seniors 4 pages (instead of 2). (I'll have to play around with the cost calculator to see how much it inflates the price, but it shouldn't be that much.).
I create a google form that each player fills out and picks their favorite photos and submits them in the google form. I can download the results in an excel spreadsheet and then have a python program that will make a call out to the Flickr API and pull down the full res image for each photo the players want in the memory book. The program will create a folder for each team (JV and Varsity) and a sub folder for each player and put the player photos in each players sub folder. This makes creating the player pages extremely easy.
In additional to the player and game photos, I also get a picture of the varsity team walking into the stadium down the walk way. I try to get a picture from the front and the back. In order to get a good picture, you really need to make them stop, line up the shot, and then have them take 2 steps, rinse and repeat. Otherwise, they walk too fast and you almost never get a good shot. you can try to get one from on top of the bleachers as well.
Look to get some candid photos of the players off the field. Cheering on their team, warming up, just chilling on the side. Fan photos are always nice to have as well (when you don't have covid preventing fans from attending).
Finally, I always get head shots of all the varsity players, as well as head shots for the Seniors (for the banners) and some candid group shots of the seniors to make a couple of senior pages in the book.
To print the book, I use a company called IngramSpark. They have pretty pretty reasonable pricing and you can normally get 140 page book for $14/book, plus shipping.
There is a $25 fee to upload the PDF to be printed and another $25 fee to upload the cover, so those need to be added to the cost of the book.
You also have to consider that seniors and coaches (4) get their books for free, so you have to offset the cost of their books by charging the other players for the free books. (For players that make it to their senior season, it all works itself out in the end. You pay for 3 years and the 4th year is free).
For the 2020 book, I charged $30/book.
The fee breakdown was as follows:
| Upload Fee for Book | $25 |
| Upload fee for Cover | $25 |
| Cost for 47 books | $780 |
| Affinity Publisher (one time cost) | $50 |
| Adobe Lightroom Classic ($9.99/mo for 1 yr) | $120 |
| Total | $1,000 |
| Collected ($33*30) | $990 |
| Lost $10 in the process. Close enough |
I obtained an ISBN from a company called isbnservices.com. Additional information can be found here.
The ISBN for the first book is here.
2020 DeSales Stallions Boys Soccer Memory Book