Take your own sports team photos and print them out using a photo template for inexpensive, great team photos parents will love.
Kids activities are expensive. The registration fees are just the beginning! You have to pay for shoes, uniforms, medals, trophies, equipment, the team party, coach gifts and of course, team photos. Many of those costs are inevitable, but team photos are easy to do yourself.
The past few seasons a parent on my son’s baseball team volunteered to take the team and individual photos. She had a basic DSLR camera with the standard 35mm lens. Nothing fancy at all. And she did a great job! This year I volunteered to take the team and player photos for my son’s team and I’m thrilled with how they came out.
How to Take and Print Your Own Sports Team Photos
Start by taking amazing team photos. See the tips below on how to take the photos. Next, you’ll need the HP Card and Invitation Kit. I received this kit as a member of the HP Smart Mom Panel. All these years of owning my beloved HP Envy 7640 printer and this was the first time I’d ever used photo paper! Don’t be me! Get this kit. It is awesome!
The kit comes with 25, 5 x 7 sheets of photo paper with rounded edges as well as 25 envelopes.
You will also need to download the HP Photo Creations software. The software has ready to go designs for just about everything. Including sports! HP also has an app called HP Cards where you can actually print right from your phone! But the baseball templates are on the desktop version.
It’s fun to explore the Photo Creations software to see all the cards and invitations you can make and print right at home.
Once in the software go to Cards –> More –> Sports.
There are quite a few sports related invitations and cards. I used the Award option. Click Print Your Own.
From this screen you make up your photo. The text can all be changed and moved. Upload the photo and insert. I did have to do one at a time. I’m just learning the software still, though, so there may be a way to do them all at once.
You can als use the Baseball Invitation template to print the team photo. I just replaced the party info with the team info and added the team photo.
I printed out an individual photo for each player with the name of the league, their team name and the year. You could also put their names on them. I printed the photos on an HP Envy 7640 using the HP Instant Ink program. I’ve had the printer and Instant Ink for years and I love them both!
Put each photo and a team photo in the envelopes in the HP Card & Invitation Kit and they are ready to go. The total cost for the photos is about $.50 each, not counting the ink. Taking and printing your own team photos is a great way to help the entire team save money while still having a photo of the season.
Tips for Taking Team Photos:
Scheduling: I scheduled the pictures before an evening game when I knew the sun wouldn’t be too bright or harsh. That said, we’ve taken plenty of team photos in the middle of the day with harsh light so don’t worry too much about the lighting.
Posing: I took a photo of each player in a batting stance as well as one of the team with their coaches. When lining up the team, try to make the rows shorter rather than longer. We had 11 players. So I did three rows of players – one row sitting, one row kneeling and one row standing. Tell the players where to put their hands (behind backs of kneeling or standing and on knees if sitting). Make sure everyone is standing tall and not slouching.
Equipment: I took these photos using a Nikon DSLR with an 18-300 mm lens, but I’m convinced that these could just as easily have been done on a phone. I’m just not a great phone photographer so I chose a camera instead. But if you take killer shots on your phone, go for it! Any camera will work, I promise. Just get out there and do it.
I am a member of the 2017 HP Smart Mom Panel. I have received HP products, but the opinions and tutorials are my own!
[dtbaker_banner text=”You Will Also Love:” linkhref=”” type=”brush”]
Baseball Team Gifts Your Little Slugger Will Love
Best Tips To Save Money On After School Sports
How to Organize Youth Sports Teams