Santa Barbara Pix is undergoing completed a major system update. The old system took too many steps to get a gallery posted and the time was excessive. The new site will be better organized and will only require a few simple steps to publish photos from a shoot. 

Rather than posting images to both team's galleries, they are now posted to the HOME TEAM GALLERY.

If you see any typos, encounter any errors, or want additional features, send us a message.

I don't know what I was thinking. Another site rebuild 6 months after the last one. One consideration was the difficulty of posting galleries on the previous design. There were a total of 9 steps involved to get the images from LightRoom to the web site for viewing. With my new redesign, I got that down to 2 steps... Being able to combine several steps into the push of a single button speeds things up and will allow others shooting for Santa Barbara Pix to easily load images from home or on the road. 

Got a lot done in the first 24 hours. A bit of a learning curve using Joomla, but it is so much more powerful and user friendly that WordPress, once I get my side of it completed.  Got several pages completed (contact, terms, privacy) as well as the header and footer setup, the main menu and the footer menu. Still some little tweaks in the design, but I need to add some content before I can see how it is looking.

Been two busy days. Today I should have all of the event categories and images from the 2021-2022 school year posted. Will need to layout/design the page to view the images. Have also been thinking about a watermark. I'm split 50/50 over using one or not. I have seen a lot of images "lifted" from our site as well as those posted to MaxPreps. For now, I think I will go with no watermark on the thumbnail images, but put one on the larger preview.

This morning I got the categories (schools) created and all the images loaded from 2021 & 2022. Also got a home page slide show functioning which is pulling random images from events stored on the server. I currently have it set to show in groups of 50, so if you refresh, you will get a different set the second time. Now working on the code to layout the home page with useful information. I still have 5 items on my 'to-do' list before it is complete. Seems like every time I complete one item on the list, I find 2 more to add to it.

We are up and running. It only took 5 days to decide on the look and program the back-end. Still some cosmetic changes to make, but everything looks good and is loading fast. If you come across any problems, please let us know. Also, if you would like to see something added, let us know that also.

I really don't mind sharing info on how to get good images when photographing sports. The one thing that does irritate me is when I am asked questions while shooting an event or sport.  You can ask, but please wait until a time-out, half time or the action is on the other side of the field/pool.

Here are some good things to know and understand when photographing your kids/friends participating in a sport.

1. Understand how your camera works and what the settings are for. (Shutter speed, Aperture, ISO).
2. Understand the image formats your camera can record. (RAW, Jpeg, TIFF and the different quality settings of each).
3. Know the rules of the game - it can help you be prepared to reposition for an upcoming shot.
4. ALWAYS stay away from the officials, players & coaches during live play.
5. I find a longer zoom lens effective for outdoor sports, such as lacrosse, football, golf, tennis, soccer, baseball, softball. My favorite lens is a 200-400mm f/4 lens & if I want a 2nd lens, it is usually a 35-70mm f/2.8 for team shots.
6. Use a fast shutter speed. Usually 1/1000 second and up is required for most outdoor sports. 1/500 second will work for athletes coming at you, such as a runner. For action that is perpendicular to you, 1/1000 second is the minimum to freeze the action.
7. Select an appropriate aperture (also known as f-stop). I mostly use f/3.5 on my smaller lens & f/4.0 - f/5.6 on my 200-400 zoom, depending on the situation. The larger the number, the more that will be in focus. The smaller number will make your subject more the center of attention, as the surrounding area (and players) will be out of focus. So if you are doing a team shot with 3 rows of athletes, it would be best to choose a larger aperture such as f/8.0 or f/11 to get all three rows sharp.
8. Choosing an ISO setting.... I let the lighting conditions determine this setting. The lower the ISO, the cleaner the images will be.  On a bright sunny day, ISO 200-400 should work. On cloudy days or under stadium lights, that would be pushed to a higher number, such as ISO 1600.  Watch your shutter speed and aperture to determine the ISO.
9. This should get you started. Go out and practice. The more you shoot, the better you will become.