Photo Guide

Photo Best Practices

By Brianna Liestman

 

The below guide will help you take the coolest team photos after trivia is over, no matter your photography skill set! Reach out to me if you have any questions.

TL;DR - The Most Important Bits

• Take Landscape (that means sideways) images, not Portrait (that's the up-and-down)

  • Bonus points if you leave some space on the sides for me to crop to a square

• If the photo is blurry and you can re-take, please do

• If anyone in the photo has an unintentionally off face (i.e. they blinked and didn’t mean to), please retake

• If the team doesn’t want a photo, please take a photo that is relevant to the trivia site

  • Cool signage, the exterior aglow at night, a glass with their logo, pets with gift cards, a photo of the prize pack, a selfie with your favorite server, or your own stock photo of their coasters. Basically, nothing unrelated to the event you just hosted, or that might be embarrassing to have uploaded on our Facebook page

• If you have an iPhone 11 or later, please update your settings!

Read on for more detail on the exact Whys and Hows of the Important Bits, alongside examples.

Team photo purposes

We post these in a slideshow in the location's landing page on our website as well as on Facebook, in weekly albums under our company profile.

 

Sharing pictures of people playing trivia is fun! It shows people what a good time trivia nights are, and hopefully encourages them to give us a try too.

 

Team photos are also really enjoyed by the players! We get requests in our social media DMs and emails requesting team photos, if the website hasn’t updated when the team looks for their photo. You remember how it felt to find yourself when you got your copy of your school yearbook, right? Our trivia players are looking for that same rush of endorphins.

 

Plus, they usually share those photos with friends, which circle back to the earlier-listed reason we take photos!

Asking for consent

Everyone’s digital boundaries are different, and we as a company want to always respect those boundaries! Before you put them in frame, follow these steps:

1. Let the team know you would like to take their photo and why;

2. Inform the team this photo will be uploaded to the Trivia Mafia website, on the location page for this venue, and then uploaded to Facebook; and

3. Ask them if they consent to having their photo taken and used for this purpose.

If they say yes, groovy! Hit that shutter button.

If they say no, congratulate them on the win, and let them go on their merry way.

Photo best practices

There are several elements to consider when taking a good trivia team photo! 

Photo orientation

We ask that hosts take photos turning their device sideways, so the final product uses landscape orientation. This creates a more consistent and well-designed slideshow for each of our location pages. There are also usually more people visible!

 

I am personally requesting that you try to stand far enough back that there is some extra room on the sides of the trivia team. When we post photos on socials, particularly for our weekly top-scoring teams roundup, the post looks best when we can use a square crop. We want to avoid cropping people out with the square, so if one photo in the post can’t use that crop we use the horizontal option instead. It’s doable, but it doesn’t look quite as pretty or fill the space as much as the square crop. (This is a Nice To Have, not a Need To Do.)

Photo quality

Bars, restaurants, breweries, the endless void…they are all spaces that aren’t as brightly lit as we’d like them to be. We are working with what we’ve got, so we know there are times when photos won’t turn out perfectly.

 

That said, we should always strive to take an image that is as in-focus as possible. If the first photo looks pretty blurry, take another one for safety. Consider using a flash. Sometimes the lighting is working against us and that can’t be helped, and sometimes we accidentally bump an elbow against something when we click the button and the second shot turns out better!

Model quality

When taking a team photo, it’s important to represent the players in the best way possible. If you’ve ever seen a photo of yourself with your eyes half-closed and thought “oof, don’t like that” as you hit the delete button, I can promise there are trivia players who feel the same way!

 

When I am taking a photo, I always say out loud, “Let me quick give it a look to make sure I can see everyone…” and either I let them know we need a redo, or I say something like “I see eight out of eight eyeballs, we’re good!” You’ll find teams appreciate the extra couple seconds that a photo review and second photo takes.

File specs for iPhone 11 and later

If you have an iPhone 11 or later, your photos are defaulted to .heic. This makes them hard to upload in a lot of spaces! Luckily, it’s not permanent.

 

Please update your settings before taking your photos. Your friendly neighborhood marketing colleague will be so grateful they don’t have to convert every photo file, and you’ll guarantee the photo will upload no matter what application it is used for!

What to do if a team doesn’t want a photo

Not everyone wants to be photographed, or to have their images shared on our website and/or social media. And that is a very valid boundary we want to respect!

 

It’s still important to use a photo that makes sense and satisfies the reasons we take and share these photos. We don’t want anything that is too embarrassing or will be trolled in the comments ending up on our Facebook.

 

A few great options include:

• A photo of the prize

• An adorable pet that is at your location (with as much detail about said pet as possible, particularly whether or not that pet knows I love them)

• A bar vibe photo: A cool sign, the wait staff, the front entrance, etc.

• A photo of you hosting (we like your mug, too!)

A few examples we’d rather not see include:

• Clip art from Google

• A photo of your cat (unless it was at trivia, which would be rad)

• A photo of your car (unless you host trivia out of your trunk, in which case we have several questions)

• An empty bar/restaurant

“You want some examples?!” “I think they want some examples, Pierce!”

Below are team photos that really understood the assignment, and team photos that have some opportunities for improvement.

Great team photos

Look how happy they all are!

Lots of nice empty space on the sides of the image

While one person is covering their face, they are clearly doing it on purpose — as is their right!

Cutie patooties

Good dogs!

Team photos that warrant a reshoot

Blinking is such a functional need for our eyes and often poorly timed, but we can always take a second pic

Did you know some animals, like tortoises and hamsters, blink one eye at a time? A real downer to know that hamster wasn’t flirting with me, TBH.

…no. Just no.

But…where do those photos live?

Maybe you keep every team photo you’ve ever taken. Maybe you delete it immediately after you submit host feedback so your phone has more space for photos of your dog. The question at hand is, what do we a Trivia Mafia do with that photo?

 

Your photos go to a database, along with your feedback, where the admin team can find it! We can pull them from there as needed and see what the team’s name and score was. This is where I look every time I get a DM from someone saying “I forgot to ask my host for the photo they took of us, do you have a copy?” I can download it from there and send it to them with congratulations on their smarty pants-ness. If you ever delete team photos and want them back, feel free to email me and I can do the same for you!

First through third places photos

The winner photos are uploaded to the location’s page on our website. This happens roughly once a day, hence why your photos might not always be there when a team looks. There are also going to be times where upload takes longer, because the Internet.

 

Finally, those photos are uploaded about once per day to our Facebook page, in a monthly album of winner photos. Facebook is also on the internet, so that frequency can change too! 

Miscellaneous photos

Currently, the miscellaneous photos are not uploaded to the website or to Facebook. It is on the to-do list for the app and website updates to have them added to the location page slideshows and Facebook eventually!

I do occasionally use these photos for various trivia promotion opportunities on social media and our newsletters. This is a great section to add a submission for our Pup Quiz, which is a weekly post showcasing doggos playing at our trivia nights, and the Pets & Plants section of the Morning Rounds!