Team Photo Hints Here are a few tips for taking better team photos. Setting Up the Photo When you take a team photo don't put the team right up against a wall or the net.  Although it is nice to have an uncluttered background  using a wall can make the photo look like a group mug shot! You also want the background to be soft (out of focus) so it doesn't not distract from the team so move the team out at least 15' from a wall, and even farther from other backgrounds.  With a large team it can be difficult to get the team close enough together that the photo isn't mostly background.  Two rows of players with the tallest players kneeling in the front seems to work well.  Look at past team photos and see what you like.   Focus You need a minimum depth-of-field for players in two rows to be in focus.  But you don't want too great a depth-of-field so the background is still soft.  f4.0 should give you what you need.  If you know how, use f4.0 to determine your exposure settings (next).   Getting the Right Exposure Do your team photos turn out too dark or too grey?  Your camera uses a light meter that determines an average exposure for the picture, assuming that overall the colours and intensities will average out to an average gray tone (called 'neutral gray').  When you take a team photo in any of our jerseys, and especially in our black track suits, the camera's light meter can be fooled because the photo is dominated by a single colour and the average intensity is not neutral gray. It just so happens that a typical Caucasian skintone is close to neutral gray.  To determine the right exposure first take a single close-up photo, in Aperture priority mode (at f4.0) or in Automatic mode, of one player's face with a light skintone.  Then see what settings the camera used.  Let's say it used 1/100th at f4.0 in Auto mode.  Set your camera to Manual exposure and use these settings.  Players' faces will be properly exposed (which is what everyone wants to look at) and the rest will follow.   White Balance If you want to get proper skintones and your camera has different white balance settings (e.g. for fluorescent lighting) try to set the correct white balance.   If This is Too Technical? Then just turn on the camera and take a photo! Submitting Photos Processing photos is a time-consuming process.  You can ensure your photos are posted to the site as quickly as possible by doing the following for each submission:  Only submit a handful of your best photos.  Weeding through dozens of photos takes a long time. Resize your photos to 800x600 pixel JPEG (.jpg) images or smaller.  This is our standard for images in the galleries we host at pbase. If you have the option, prefix the name of each photo with your team name (g15ur, b15ub, etc.)  We received 3700 photos last season and we don’t want to mix them up.  For example: 2008_g16ur_0526.jpg is a photo for 2007/2008 Girls 16U Red. Put your photos in a zip file and send the zip file. Keep your original hi-res photos.  We'll ask for them via email if we need them for publication.   You should also file them so you can submit them on CD-ROM for the year-end banquet. Questions?   Send your questions to: web@durhamattack.org