Inside a 50 Athlete Sports Media Day | p1440 fab50 VolleybalL
I photographed the p1440 fab50 Summit at Arizona Athletic Grounds, where 50 athletes were scheduled to move through a high-volume media day designed to create professional headshots, creative hero portraits, and volleyball action photography.
The challenge was not simply making one strong photograph. With three groups of approximately 14 to 16 athletes and about one hour allocated to each group, the shoot required a workflow that could create consistent images for every athlete while still giving each person something with more personality than a traditional team photo.
Project Details
Event: p1440 fab50 Summit
Location: Arizona Athletic Grounds
Date: April 2026
Athletes scheduled: 50
Media-day groups: 3
Athletes per group: Approximately 14–16
Time per group: Approximately 1 hour
Photography: Headshots, hero portraits, and volleyball action
Additional event content: Training, athlete interactions, event atmosphere, and partner imagery, where applicable
Photographer: Paul Tumpson
View my sports photography portfolio: www.paultumpson.com/sports
Planning Photography for Nearly 50 Athletes
High-volume sports photography requires more than creating a good lighting setup. Athlete flow becomes a major part of the production.
The fab50 athletes were separated into three groups with approximately one hour available for each group. Staff members helped organize the athletes and move them through the photography process, which allowed me to stay focused on posing, lighting, timing and consistency.
That organization matters.
If one athlete requires several unnecessary extra minutes, the delay can quickly compound across a roster of 40 or 50 people. A successful media day needs enough structure to keep athletes moving while still leaving room for individual personality.
I arrived early so I could evaluate the spaces, prepare equipment and establish the photography setups before the athletes began rotating through them. Once photography started, the priority was making sure each participant received a strong collection of usable images rather than allowing one concept to consume too much of the available time.
Creating Consistent Athlete Headshots
The first part of the media day focused on clean athlete headshots photographed against a bright backdrop.
Consistency was especially important because these portraits were intended to work as a collection.
When dozens of individual athlete photographs appear together on a roster, website, graphic or social campaign, differences in camera height, lighting, framing and background can make the final presentation feel disconnected.
The goal was to establish the lighting once and then create a repeatable look while still giving each athlete enough direction to look natural and confident.
These images are intentionally simple.
That simplicity is what makes them useful.
A clean athlete headshot can be used for profiles, recruiting graphics, tournament content, announcements and other branded materials without competing with the design placed around it.
Going Beyond the Headshot With Hero Portraits
The next goal was to create imagery with more personality.
A standard headshot identifies the athlete. A hero portrait should communicate something about the athlete.
For the outdoor portraits, I incorporated the beach courts, volleyballs and p1440 environment so the photographs immediately connected each athlete to the sport.
That gave us room to create more playful and expressive images, including volleyball poses and photographs that highlighted the p1440 branding.
This is one of the areas where I think modern school media days can become significantly more valuable.
Instead of giving an athlete only one traditional portrait, schools can create combinations of:
professional headshots, dramatic athlete portraits, equipment-based poses and school-branded imagery.
The result is a much larger content library that can be used throughout an entire season.
Creating Action Photography During a Media Day
Action photography was the most time-sensitive part of the production.
A portrait can usually be recreated quickly once the lighting and pose are established. Action photography works differently.
The athlete's movement, body position, expression and the position of the volleyball all need to come together at the correct moment. Even a simple volleyball movement may require several repetitions before everything aligns visually.
With nearly 50 athletes moving through the schedule, efficiency became important.
For some athletes we created more dramatic diving or airborne images. For others, I used movements that could be performed and timed quickly so I could continue giving participants action imagery without allowing the schedule to fall significantly behind.
The resulting photographs show exactly why I like combining portraits and action during a media day. The clean headshots provide consistency, while images of athletes diving, serving or interacting with the volleyball add movement and personality.
Lighting Athletes Outdoors in the Arizona Sun
One of my favorite photographs from the session is actually the behind-the-scenes image showing the outdoor lighting setup.
Photographing athletes on sand in bright Arizona daylight creates a very different challenge from working inside.
Instead of simply accepting harsh overhead sunlight, I used lighting and diffusion equipment to gain more control over how the athlete was illuminated.
That allowed me to create photographs with a more intentional, polished look while still preserving the beach-volleyball environment.
For a school or athletic organization, this is an important distinction. A professional media day does not necessarily need to happen inside a studio. Existing courts, fields, stadiums and training facilities can become part of the visual identity of the photographs.
What a Sports Media Day Can Create for a School
The p1440 project reinforced something I think is increasingly important for high school and club sports.
Athletic programs need far more visual content than they once did.
A single media day can potentially create images for athlete profiles, social media graphics, schedules, recruiting materials, senior recognition, banners, websites, game announcements, sponsorship content and promotional campaigns.
Planning those uses before the shoot helps determine exactly what should be photographed.
A smaller roster may have enough time for multiple hero concepts and several different action movements per athlete. A program with 40 or 50 athletes needs a more structured rotation and may benefit from additional photography time or multiple stations if substantial action variety is required.
The number of athletes, desired deliverables and complexity of the photographs should determine the media-day schedule, not the other way around.
Planning a High School or Team Sports Media Day
For a future school media day, I would begin by identifying the size of the roster and exactly what the athletic department wants to create.
That could include standardized headshots, individual hero portraits, team photographs, action poses, senior banners or social-media content.
From there, we can determine the backgrounds, locations, uniforms, props, lighting and amount of time needed for each athlete.
Having a finalized athlete roster and staff available to help move participants between stations can also make an enormous difference when photographing larger teams.
The objective is to keep the process organized without making the athletes feel like they are simply moving through an assembly line.
Sports Media Day Photography for Phoenix Schools & Teams
I provide sports media day photography for schools, clubs, teams and athletic organizations throughout Phoenix and Arizona.
Sessions can be built around the size of the roster and the type of content your organization needs, including professional athlete headshots, creative hero portraits, team photography and action imagery.
The same production approach can be adapted for volleyball, football, basketball, baseball, softball, soccer, wrestling, combat sports and other athletic programs.
If your school or organization wants to create something more polished than a traditional team-photo day, we can build the session around how you actually plan to use the images throughout the season.
Event partner: Franklin Sports
https://www.franklinsports.com/
Primary facility partner:
https://www.azathleticgrounds.com/
