How teenage athletes benefit from 1-on-1 portrait sessions

We want the best for the young athletes in our families. We expect the best for them, whether we’re talking about finding the right team or club to the ideal coach to choosing the best skills camps.

We are, after all, their No. 1 fans. We’d do anything for our sons or daughters if it means they can touch their athlete dreams.

And sports these days are wildly more complicated, more involved, then we ever experienced. If our teen athletes want to grab the attention of college recruiters or aspire to some day reach the professional level, they’re expected to do more than achieve on the field, court, in the rink, or the pool.

You have a professional athlete portrait artist on your team.

They’re expected to some how expertly market themselves online. College applications, social media, NIL deals, endorsements, and on and on.

That’s why for many teenage athletes it’s important to go beyond the scarcity of team picture day. You just don’t get enough from team picture day to help you market yourself or tell your athlete story.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution right here near you.

And today, I want to dive into all the benefits of a one-on-one athlete portrait session for your teenager. That way you can decide whether or not getting pro-level images for of your teenage athlete for your teenage athlete is worth it.

Let’s go!

What is a one-on-one athlete portrait session

It’s pretty simple. Your teenager athletes gets an entire, elite-level portrait session all to him or herself.

During team picture day, your family’s athlete gets, what, maybe a minute or two with the photographer. And that generates maybe one or two images?

That’s not enough. Not for your teen’s social media or online presence. Not to fully tell his or her story as an athlete. Not enough to represent who they are as a person.

Team picture day just doesn't produce enough visuals for your teen's social media accounts.

I designed one-on-one athlete portrait sessions to elevate everyone’s experience, to develop a strong connection, to amplify who your teenage athlete is, why they are unique, and why their fans, college recruiters, coaches, and others should pay attention to them.

There are four portraits session options - on-location athlete portraits, in-studio athlete lifestyle portraits, casual athlete lifestyle portraits, and off-season training portraits - so you can customize the right fit for your family’s athlete.

Each one takes about an hour to 90 minutes. They generate so many different portraits of your athlete that you’ll have an abundance to use.

What are three benefits of these one-on-one athlete portrait sessions? Here they are:

1.) Develop a portfolio for college applications, recruiting, scholarships

These days, grabbing attention online is essential. Millions of teenagers are filling our online recruiting profiles, sharing visuals on TikTok and Instagram, reaching out to coaches with images attached to the emails, hoping to build a social media following that can lead to endorsements.

But not everyone - in fact, very few of them - have a professional athlete portrait artist on their personal team.

You do.

Grabbing the attention of coaches, recruiters, and followers is easier when you have a professional photographer on your team.

When you hire a professional image maker, it signals to a college recruiter or a coach how committed your family’s athlete is to their career.

It separates them from the over abundance of selfies and cliche team pictures the other teenage athletes use.

Any edge you can get in the recruiting process is vital.

2.) Use the images to effectively manage an athlete’s social media

One of the hardest parts of running a social media account for anyone, especially a young athlete, is making sure you don’t run out.

You don’t want to run out of visuals, ideas, momentum. Once you do, once you stop showing up on social media consistently, you stop building your online brand and your growth stagnates.

A key to running a successful youth athlete social media platform is making sure you have plenty of visuals so you can post consistently.

Believe me, college recruiters and coaches notice. If your athlete hasn’t posted in months, then a person is just going to keep scrolling and forget they ever saw your athlete’s account.

But hiring an athlete portrait photographer means you’ll have an abundance of images to use in the pre-season, during the season, and in the off-season.

And because a professional photographer can elevate the visuals to elite levels, it’s gonna get people to stop scrolling and pay attention to your family’s athlete.

That’s the idea, after all, of building a social media following, right?

3.) Build a personal brand

Showcasing professional portraits of a teenage athlete is more than just displaying pretty pictures.

It’s about what makes your son or daughter unique, special, someone worth paying attention to.

What story do they want to tell? What are their values? What kind of teammate and competitor are they? What will a college or pro team get if your teenage athlete joins their squad?

Opportunities to network and tell a youth athlete's personal, unique story are greater now than they ever have been.

Never before has a young athlete had the opportunity to take control of their own personal brand like today.

That’s powerful stuff. They get to define who they are to the world in ways we parents never could during our playing days, and that opportunity can truly lead to special places for our sons and daughters (like college scholarships).

During a one-on-one athlete portrait session, I aim to reflect your athlete’s personality accurately. I want to listen to them, respect who they are, understand their journey, so I can creatively represent those values in the portraits we make.

Of course, there are other benefits.

One-on-one athlete portrait sessions celebrate milestones and achievements; capture a fleeting time in the young lives of our children that last such a short time (and once it’s done, there’s no getting it back); generate wall art that we parents proudly display in our homes or offices; build self-confidence and self-esteem in our teenagers; and so on.

Ultimately, it’s about doing and providing what’s best for our teenage athletes.

After all, we parents are their No. 1 fans.

And I want to help you be that No. 1 fan.

If you’re ready to learn more about how one-on-one athlete portrait sessions work, check this out.

Dave Pidgeon is the owner of and chief image maker at Creative Sports Photography, a premier athlete portrait service for young athletes. CSP is based in Lancaster, Pa., and available anywhere. You can contact Dave at dave@creativesportsphotography.com.