Have you ever wondered what actually makes a sports photography day run smoothly? Photograph a thousand athletes in a single day, and the cracks will show up fast if the plan isn't tight.
Jay and Carinna Boatwright, industry-renowned owners of smaX Photography and Boatwright Bootcamp, built a high-volume sports workflow to avoid those cracks—and they walked through the whole system in a recent PhotoDay webinar.
From the software that keeps galleries organized to the editing tools that turn days of hard work into a two-day turnaround, it's a workflow built for events running 300 to 1,500 athletes, with every piece connected to the next.
Keep reading to learn how smaX Photography streamlined their business to keep up with even the busiest sports picture days.
Pre-planning that keeps the business moving
For Jay and Carinna, the work starts long before picture day. Keeping something in the pipeline matters more than winning any single event, and a CRM like 17hats does that work in the background at smaX: workflows, contracts, questionnaires, scheduling, reminders, and client communication all live in one place. For a large league job, that means tracking board member contacts, session type, automatic emails, contracts, questionnaires, and team count spreadsheets, all tied into a calendar that covers both the business and the rest of life.
"The key point: use the software to its full capacity."
Contracts do real work here too. The smaX approach spells out cancellation rules, weather and act-of-God situations, image usage limits, and what happens if a league shares images outside the agreed terms. Getting that in writing before the season starts means fewer misunderstandings or surprises when something goes wrong.
Building the schedule around volume
Jay and Carinna's baseline number: about 50 athletes per photographer per hour. At that pace, a five-hour day covers roughly 250 athletes per photographer, so a 1,000-athlete event needs multiple stations running at once, plus a separate team photographer.
Keeping roles simple is what makes that pace sustainable at smaX. Individual photographers handle individuals. The team photographer handles teams. Assistants manage posing and line flow. A salesperson or floor manager handles crowd control and communication. One job per person, no overlap.
Buffers matter too. A hard 20-minute break resets the crew on longer days, while a floor manager keeps things moving so the pause doesn't stall the schedule; it’s also a useful buffer when a team shows up early, runs late, or needs a quick adjustment.
Crowd control shapes the whole day
A floor manager is the first point of contact for every athlete and parent: explaining the process, keeping teams on schedule, answering questions, and catching problems before they reach the photographer. It's a role Jay and Carinna treat as central to the whole day's success.
"A strong shoot manager can read the crowd, organize the pace, and move teams to the right place at the right time."
QR codes speed up check-in, with large A-frame signs pointing people to them so nobody's left guessing where to go. That check-in flow ties directly into PhotoDay and keeps the front of the line from backing up.
Every photographer also gets a line wrangler. That person stages the next athlete, checks uniforms and hair, and keeps the line moving—one assistant per photographer is worth the cost on a high-volume day, in smaX's experience.
Design the layout for flow, not chaos
The smaX layout philosophy is simple: clear entrances, clear exits, and separate spaces for individual and team photos, with no crossing through another photographer’s area. That separation matters more as team sizes grow past 40 or 50 athletes, since one wrong path can slow down several stations at once.
Individuals typically go first, then teams second to avoid holding up the whole team photo while waiting on the one or two athletes who always arrive last.
Bringing your own risers and benches removes the guesswork of whatever's sitting on-site, keeps the ground cleaner, and adds consistency across venues, something Jay and Carinna rely on across different fields and gyms. For team photos specifically, an extra set of eyes helps quality hold up as the group size climbs.
Lighting and gear decisions that matter
The first setup call is background and light. Use an app like PhotoPills to track the sun in advance. Face athletes north to keep the light easier to manage, or use scrims to create shade when the better background forces you to set up facing a different direction.
"No shoot should depend on one battery, one transmitter, or one piece of gear with no backup."
That redundancy is what keeps one gear failure from derailing the day.
Mirrorless cameras earn their place in Jay and Carinna's kit: viewfinder image review, strong autofocus, easy leveling, and, on Sony systems specifically, battery life long enough to matter on a full day. For lighting, Godox holds up better outdoors than the alternatives smaX has tested, including Westcott's FJ system, largely because the transmitter stays visible in bright conditions.
Photograph fast, keep the images strong
"Progressions work better than multiple reposes."
Progressions beat repeated poses at smaX. One setup, several angles, and maybe one simple second pose if time allows: a ball held here, a hand on hip, pointing at the camera, flexing a muscle. That second pose should take one to two seconds, not a full reset.
"The goal is not one or two images per athlete. The goal is enough variety to support strong sales, especially for digital buy-all orders."
Constant, simple direction keeps athletes engaged through the pace: look right here, eyes here, game face, smile. And for Jay and Carinna, the goal isn't one strong image per athlete, it's volume. Progressions alone can produce six images or more per athlete, which is what makes a Download All product valuable.
Sell before the day starts
Sales begin before the first photo at smaX. AdvancePay at $40 with free shipping is the incentive doing the work, collected through PhotoDay, explained clearly, and kept simple at check-in.
"The key is simple: collect the payment through PhotoDay, explain the benefit clearly, and keep the process easy."
The floor manager and salesperson push on-site opt-ins and guide parents and coaches through the process, strengthening both check-in flow and sell-through.
Edit fast, deliver fast
Hand-editing every image was the bottleneck slowing smaX down, until they found Imagen, which trains on the studio's own editing profile and adjusts each image individually rather than applying one flat preset, which matters because lighting conditions shift from image to image across a long day.
"Fast delivery supports faster sales."
The payoff for Jay and Carinna: faster editing, faster delivery, faster sales, and meaningfully less manual labor, often cutting turnaround to about two days, sometimes next day.
A simple sales strategy
Two price points cover most of smaX's work: $119 for regular rec ball, $149 for specialty jobs like high schools or gymnastics. Download All pricing stays available for a limited window, usually one week, before the gallery shifts to tiered pricing.
Expiring galleries keep the sales cycle organized without manual follow-up. Winter and spring sessions, for example, can both expire in mid-June, which also gives sales a boost during slower months.
"That structure helps reduce babysitting and keeps the workflow automated. It also creates a sales boost during slower months."
For Jay and Carinna, running PhotoDay, 17hats, and Imagen together as one connected system is what keeps all of this from turning into extra moving parts to manage.
The Power of a Streamlined System in High-Volume Sports Photography
Jay and Carinna Boatwright built smaX Photography's high-volume sports system around one idea: pre-planning, crowd control, shooting flow, editing, and sales must connect to the same system instead of running as separate efforts.
"The formula stays the same every time. The crew knows the roles. The workflow stays organized. The images move fast. The sales process stays simple."
The numbers matter here: 50 athletes per photographer per hour, one assistant per photographer, a $40 AdvancePay incentive, and a two-day editing turnaround are the specifics that make the model work at scale.
None of it depends on one heroic day. Instead, it depends on a repeatable structure the crew can run every time. Get that structure right once, the way smaX has, and the season starts working for the business instead of the other way around.
Want to build a season around a system like Jay and Carinna Boatwright? Request a demo to connect with the PhotoDay team. Want to jump right in? Create a free account to get started.
