What to shoot at a youth soccer game so parents buy

One of the other parents asked if you could get some shots of their kid at the tournament. Then another one asked. You're not photographing just your own kid anymore. You're photographing a team, and a dad on r/sportsphotography landed in exactly that spot this spring.

Here's the short answer on how to photograph youth soccer when other parents want the photos: shoot every kid on the roster, with their face showing, in a few kinds of moments, and send a handful of good frames per kid the same day. Settings matter, but coverage is what parents pay for. Each parent is looking for one thing: their own kid.

Why most youth soccer photography tips stop short#

Most youth soccer photography tips are written for a parent shooting their own child. They cover the lens, the shutter speed and where to stand, and they're right about all of it.

Once other parents are asking, the job changes. A great shot of the striker sells to one family. The other families scroll past it looking for their own kid, and if their kid isn't there, they don't buy anything.

So the question stops being "did I get a great photo?" and becomes "did I get a good photo of every kid?"

A youth sports shot list parents actually buy#

Parents don't buy "the game." They buy a few kinds of moments with their kid in them. Aim for each of these, for every kid:

1. Their kid with the ball. Face up, ball in the frame. This is the photo every family expects, so every kid needs at least one.
2. The challenge. Two players going for the same ball. It can sell twice, once to each family, if both faces show.
3. The reaction. The goal celebration, the team piling on, the high five after a save. Skip the tears unless the moment is clearly okay to share.
4. Between the plays. The water break, the huddle, two friends laughing on the bench. One photographer who sells at youth events says these candid shots are easy to take and sell well, because they show kids having fun with their friends. They don't need perfect timing either.
5. The team. The lineup before kickoff and the handshake line after. It's the one photo every family is in.

Action shots are the hardest to get, and some kids barely touch the ball all game. The between-the-plays shots are how those kids end up in the gallery too.

Shoot the roster, not the ball#

Following the ball is the default. Your lens goes where the action is, and the action keeps finding the same three fast kids. At the end of the game the striker has 80 frames, the center back has six, and the keeper has two, both from behind.

It happens to good photographers too. One parent described how his wife, a former military photographer who now shoots their kids' teams, misses a lot of kids because the ones without the ball don't look like they're doing much. To those kids' parents, a sharp photo of their kid would have been plenty.

Every parent at that game is going to look for their own kid. The fix is simple and a little boring:

• Bring the roster. A photo of it on your phone works, or numbers written on your hand. Tick off each kid once you have a sharp frame of them with the face showing.
• Spend a few minutes of each half away from the ball. Defenders holding the line, the kid waiting to sub in.
• Check at halftime. Scroll the back of the camera and see who's missing. You have the whole second half to fix it.
• Don't forget the keeper. Keepers are far away and still for long stretches. A dad whose son keeps goal for a U12 team said player action was easy and his own kid was the hard one. Walk down toward the goal line for a few minutes each half, when play comes their way.
• Shoot the other team too. The other sideline buys, and those parents are often the ones who come up and ask.

Set a number before kickoff. With 12 kids on the roster and five keepers per kid, you're after about 60 good photos per team, and you can check that at halftime.

Get their faces in the frame#

A parent knows their kid's face before the jersey number. A clean tackle shot from behind is a nice photo, but the parent has to squint to tell it's their son, and most won't buy a photo they have to squint at. The number on the back helps you sort. It doesn't make a parent want the photo.

Stand at the end your team is attacking, so players run toward you, and switch sides at halftime when the teams switch ends. Get low, on one knee or a low stool, so faces come up level with your lens instead of showing you the tops of heads. Then wait for the head to come up: after the first touch, players look up to find a pass, and that's the frame you want.

This matters even more when parents find their photos with a face search. The search compares the face in the parent's photo with the faces in your photos. A frame where the kid's face doesn't show can't come up in that kid's search. On an open gallery, parents could still scroll to it. If the event is set so parents see only what their search finds, they never see it at all.

Youth soccer photography settings that keep faces sharp#

You don't need a new camera for any of this. These settings get you more sharp faces:

• Shutter speed at 1/1000 s or faster for kids who run fast. For the little ones, 1/500 s can be enough. A blurry face is the first frame you'll throw away.
• Continuous autofocus with tracking, and face or eye detection on if your camera has it.
• The widest aperture your lens has, around f/2.8 to f/4, so the parked cars and folding chairs behind the kid go soft.
• Auto ISO, so the shutter speed holds when the sun goes behind a cloud or the evening game starts under lights.
• Short bursts of three or four frames as the play peaks. Every extra frame is one more you have to look at tonight.
• A 70-200 lens for small-sided games. On a full field, something that reaches 300 or 400 helps a lot.

Overcast days help, because the light is soft and kids aren't squinting into the sun. And watch the background. One step to the left often swaps a parked truck for green grass.

Deliver fewer photos, faster#

The hard part comes after the game. You come home with 1,200 frames, and the parents want theirs now.

Cull hard. A parent who wrote up a season of lessons photographing youth soccer went from hundreds of photos per game to 40 or 50, because sending every burst frame buries the good ones. A parent would rather see their kid's five best than scroll through thirty almost-identical frames.

Then send them the same day. Interest in a game photo peaks on the drive home. Our guide on getting game photos to parents before they leave the field goes step by step, and why sports photos don't sell covers what else gets in the way.

If you're still deciding whether to charge, see whether to charge parents for sports photos. If you've decided to sell, our guide on how much to sell sports photos for has the prices photographers report.

How PixDeel turns your shot list into sales#

We built PixDeel so every family finds their own kid without scrolling through everyone else's. You create the event, upload and share one link, or print its QR code for the sideline.

A parent searches with a photo of their kid taken on their own phone, with just that one person in it, and gets back the photos their kid appears in. They agree to a short consent first, and the search photo is used only to run the search: it is never saved. So every frame where a kid's face shows is a frame their parent's search can find.

You choose whether parents can scroll the whole gallery or only see what their search finds. One button adds every photo the search found to the cart, and parents check out with just their email. If you set a package, a parent who found their kid sees it at the top of the results: every photo their kid appears in for one price. It only shows up when it's the better deal.

Each photo from the game that sells leaves you 90% of the price, $9.00 on a $10 photo. Card processing is never taken from your share, and there are no surprise fees.

Bring the roster to your next game. Free to start, pay only when you sell.