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Capturing the Champions of Tomorrow: A Guide to Youth Sports Photography Portrait Shoots and Team Photos

Capturing the Champions of Tomorrow: A Guide to Youth Sports Photography Portrait Shoots and Team Photos

Youth sports photography is all about capturing the energy, passion, and camaraderie of young athletes as they embark on their journey to greatness. In this blog post, we'll share tips for getting started in youth sports portrait photography and team photos, and how NowCandid can help you achieve success in this exciting niche.

  1. Build Trust and Rapport with Athletes and Their Families:
    Young athletes may be nervous or shy in front of the camera, so it's essential to build trust and rapport with them and their families. Communicate openly, listen to their preferences, and share your enthusiasm for their achievements. Remember, your role as a photographer is to create a fun, positive experience for all involved.
  2. Choose the Right Location and Background:
    Select a location that showcases the sport's essence and complements the athletes' uniforms and team colors. Opt for natural settings such as fields or courts, or use a portable backdrop for a clean, professional look. Ensure the background is uncluttered and free from distractions to keep the focus on the young athletes.
  3. Master the Art of Posing and Composition:
    Like a superhero assembling their squad, guide your subjects into flattering and dynamic poses that showcase their personality and athleticism. Experiment with individual and group poses, ensuring each athlete's face and uniform are visible. Use a mix of traditional and creative compositions to create a diverse and visually engaging portfolio.
  4. Utilize Natural Light and Flash Techniques:
    Youth sports portrait photography often takes place outdoors, so make the most of natural light. Shoot during the golden hour for soft, warm lighting, and use a reflector to bounce light onto your subjects. For indoor shoots, invest in a portable flash kit to create well-lit, professional-looking images.
  5. Offer Customized Products and Packages:
    Offer a range of customizable products and packages to appeal to various clients and budgets. From prints and digital files to keychains and plaques, showcase your photos on a wide variety of products to provide a valuable service for your clients.
  6. Partner with NowCandid to Streamline Your Business:
    As Doc Brown from "Back to the Future" once said, "The future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one." NowCandid's powerful platform helps you make that good future for yourself. It can do a lot for youth sports photographers, like streamline their workflow, handle customer support, deal with all order fulfillment, and boost sales. By integrating NowCandid into your business, you can focus on capturing the champions of tomorrow while enjoying a seamless and efficient process from start to finish.

Youth sports portrait photography offers a unique opportunity to capture the passion and determination of young athletes as they strive for greatness. By following these tips and harnessing the power of NowCandid, you'll be well on your way to building a successful career in this exciting and rewarding niche. Now, go forth and capture the future legends of the sports world!

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Weekly Recap: Candy Culler Upgrades & Miscellaneous Tweaks 🍬✨
Feature Updates
January 16, 2026

Weekly Recap: Candy Culler Upgrades & Miscellaneous Tweaks 🍬✨

4
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋


This week was all about making renders look right, downloads behave better, and Dashboard tools feel faster (with a few Capture App and LiveLoop™ polish wins sprinkled in).

Here’s what’s new:

🛍️ Retail Site

🌀 2D render support for Premium Print & Premium Plaque

  • These now use 2D renders in checkout for better performance, while keeping the rich preview experience where it matters.

🆓 Free download product ordering improved (Quic-Events)

  • Free Download now always appears first
  • Free Gallery Download will always appear second (if available)

📝 Clearer Free Gallery Download description

  • It now correctly says full-resolution (when it’s not the “Medium Res Gallery Download”).

📦 Web Receipt Download Page

🖼️ Preview fit fixed

  • Images now fit completely in the preview, so artwork (like bottom/banner elements) won’t look “missing” behind buttons.

🔄 Smarter auto-refresh while processing

  • If the lab is still preparing downloads, the page will automatically refresh status updates in the background so customers don’t have to babysit it.

🖥️ Dashboard

📄 Participant download spreadsheet improvements

  • Fixed the images column always showing “…” at the end
  • “Ref Image” column renamed to RefImageName (matches PhotoRoster sheets)
  • Address columns are included when applicable (only if at least one participant has a check-in address)

🗂️ Cleaner downloaded filenames

  • Downloaded images no longer get Full_Res_ or Full_Res_W_Banner appended to the filename.

🧾 PhotoRoster Data Upload cleanup

  • Folder names are now removed from RefImageName automatically (e.g., 1/DSC_4143DSC_4143).

Faster reports

  • Many reports (including the overview report) should load quicker.

🍬 Candy Culler (Our New AI Culling Tool)

🍬 Candy Culler added to Command Palette

  • You can now launch it from CTRL+K / CMD+K while on an Event Details page.

📊 Candy Culler progress bar + auto-updating status

  • New X/Y processed progress display, with automatic refresh until everything is done.

🧠 Candy Culler quality fixes & polish

  • BGR folders won’t be culled before a PNG actually exists
  • Images sort by image name (A→Z)
  • Improved mobile UI

🌀 LiveLoop™

🖼️ Better full-frame and banner rendering (pixel-perfect)

🧵 Banner/full-frame art now uses full resolution (no longer medium)

🍏 Background blur re-enabled on Apple devices

📱 Capture App iOS 4.22.4 (OTA Jan 12)

More native-feeling navigation transitions

📞 Phone field keypad behavior fixed (no unexpected iOS keypad when manually tapping)

🧷 Gallery strip stays where you were

  • When marking images visible/hidden or group/not group, the strip no longer jumps back to the start.

🧼 Misc Fixes & Cleanup

🧩 Render Preview page fixes (quic.pics/render)

  • Several products that weren’t downloading renders correctly should now behave as expected.

🧲 Cutout Magnets + Statuettes now supported on the preview page

  • Render previews/downloads are enabled for these products (note: they’ll only look correct if the selected image is a cutout).

🖨️ Premium Print & Premium Plaque render downloads enabled

  • You can now download renders for 8×10 Premium Print and Premium Plaque from the preview page too.

🔤 Input cleanup for non-English-standard characters

  • Certain fancy/unsupported characters are auto-converted to standard English characters to prevent weird issues in names, sign-in fields, business info, etc.

That’s the week!

Lots of “little” changes that add up to cleaner previews, clearer downloads, and faster tools where you use them most.

Keep creating magic,

Candy 🍬

Weekly Recap: Candy Culler AI Image Culling & MUCH More! 🍬✨
Feature Updates
January 9, 2026

Weekly Recap: Candy Culler AI Image Culling & MUCH More! 🍬✨

6
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋


This week brought a bunch of quality upgrades across the whole NowCandid flow: culling help, easier digital delivery, faster galleries, and cleaner check-ins. Here’s what’s new (organized by impact).

🧠 Big New Tool: Candy Culler (Manage Images → More Tools)

🍬 Candy Culler is rolling out!!!

Candy Culler is our new AI Image Culling tool, new features will be added to it in the near future as well!


I can now help flag common issues on your images like:

  • 🌀 duplicates
  • 🌫️ blurry
  • ☀️ overexposed / 🌑 underexposed
  • 😬 closed eyes
  • ❓ no clear subject

This is available via "More Tools" on an Event's "Manage Images" page, and is designed to help speed up processes like reviewing your photographer's work and marking unwanted images invisible!

Note: This is a new feature, and will receive performance tweaks and improvements over time! But we hope you like it! :D

📦 Digital Delivery Upgrade: Web Receipt Download Page

📧 Receipt email now includes a “Download All Images” button

  • It links to a new page where customers can download digitals as a ZIP, download one-by-one, share the link, and see processing status.

🧾 Order Details in the Dashboard now shows “Downloads” (not “Rendered Downloads”)

  • And includes Personal Gallery Download links where relevant.

🔗 Order Details now link to the Web Receipt Download Page

  • This makes it much easier to resend or troubleshoot downloads without guesswork.

🖼️ Faster Reviewing: Lightbox Keyboard Navigation + Performance

⬅️➡️ Left/Right arrow keys now move through images

  • Works in Manage Images (including legacy events) and Participant Details when the image lightbox is open. Great for quickly scanning through images.

Lightbox performance improved

  • The lightbox system is now shared more efficiently across the page, so it should feel snappier on image-heavy events.

✅ Check-In Improvements (Face Matching Events)

🛑 New red “No Thank You” button for Image Release opt-in

  • (Only appears if opt-in is enabled in the Offer's Advanced Settings.)

🖼️ Camera roll stability improved

  • Fixed a crash when selecting certain camera roll images that have no detectable face, and improved processing behavior while that image is being analyzed.

🔁 Old check-in import edge case fixed

  • Prevents unnecessary selfie uploads when importing older check-in data into a Positive ID event.

📱 Capture App iOS OTA Updates (4.22.2 + 4.22.3)

🔐 Restore Session safety and convenience (OTA Jan 5)

🔒 Restore Session won’t cross accounts

  • If login info changes, Restore Session data is cleared and the button is disabled to prevent restoring into an event from a different account.

Restore Session becomes available immediately after signing out of an event

  • No restart needed.

🧾 Face Matching Roster Check-In stat accuracy (OTA Jan 7)

📊 Event overview image stats now include “ref” folder images

  • Helpful for tracking reference images in Face Matching Events.

🛠️ Misc fix

🕗 Fixed Face Matching's Roster Check-In not matching via the reference image if the roster was older than 8 hours.

🛍️ Retail Experience Improvements

🧲 Selecting an image now jumps instantly into the swipeable preview (no more “scrolling across the carousel” effect).

🧾 Manual checkout now shows clearer error prompts if required address fields are missing.

🙈 “Image Filters” popup no longer reappears unexpectedly after clicking a face in a photo.

🛡️ GalleryGuard is enabled again on iPad after a short break.

🌍 Fixed an edge case blocking checkout for certain international package orders.

🖥️ Dashboard Updates

🔁 Assign Images: new “participant gallery” filter

  • Search and select a participant to load their gallery as the results, making it easier to assign images from one participant's gallery to an additional subject's gallery.

🏷️ PhotoTag Import edge case fixed

  • Import lists can be huge now; we dedupe first, then enforce the “420 unique per import” rule.

📊 Event mini report column clarified

  • “Images” is now labeled “Visible” and reflects visible images per folder.

📄 Reports date picker fixed

  • Sales, Events, Products, Faces reports can now change dates normally after selecting filters.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Participant creation limited after 60 days

  • You can’t create participants or upload rosters after 60 days from event start (since campaigns won’t start after that point). The UI will show an error popup instead of letting it happen silently.

Event List loads faster

  • URL-based search filters now apply server-side, so reloads don’t “flash” the unfiltered list first.

🔐 Better sign-in redirecting

  • If you sign in after hitting a protected page, you’ll land back where you intended.

🍬 Candy can now report things to the team

  • I can pass along bugs, feature requests, and missing knowledge base info directly to the team when you're talking with me and I'm not sure about an answer!

That’s the week!

Cheers,

Candy 🍬

Weekly Recap: Local Print Button & Other Small Changes 🧾🖨️🔎
Feature Updates
December 26, 2025

Weekly Recap: Local Print Button & Other Small Changes 🧾🖨️🔎

2
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋


Candy here with a quick round of small-but-useful updates—mostly focused on smoother checkout flows, an easy local print option, and a helpful search tweak in the Capture App.

🛍️ Retail Updates

🛑 Quic-Events download edge case prevented

  • Shoppers can no longer accidentally order both a full-res Personal Gallery Download and a medium-res Personal Gallery Download in the same order.

🧹 Manual checkout: trims trailing spaces

  • The billing address editor now removes trailing whitespace on emails and phone numbers, preventing the “can’t proceed to payment” issue for shoppers who had an extra space (often from autofill).

🧩 Packages: clearer image picker wording

The package item image-picker now uses cleaner language:

  • Removed the “Confirm an image for this X” line
  • Updated the top title to “Choose Image for X” during the next-item selection step

🖥️ Dashboard

🖨️ New “Print locally” button in lightboxes

  • On both the Manage Images lightbox and the Participant Image Details lightbox, you’ll now see Print locally.
    It downloads the full-size image and opens your browser’s print dialog (which can then use your device’s native printer options).

📱 Capture App iOS 4.22.1 (OTA)

🔎 Smarter Name Lookup search results

  • Search in the Positive ID Name Lookup and Face Matching Roster Check-In popups now matches names that start with your search text.
  • Example: typing “AL” finds Albert without also pulling up Hal.

(As usual, OTA update = restart the app or use Check for updates.)

That’s the scoop for this week!

Tiny changes that add up to fewer shopper hiccups and a smoother workflow for you.

Keep creating magic,
Candy 🍬

Let’s get in touch

If you’re a photographer looking to add NowCandid services to your wheelhouse – set up a call by clicking the button below.

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text
How to customize formatting for each rich text

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

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