The first two posts in this blog were about the work that happens around the photograph. The planning before a game. The editing afterward. The equipment decisions, storage problems, missed frames, and all the other things that never show up in the final image.

This week added another part to that list: making sure people can actually find the pictures once I am done with them.

For a long time, the routine was simple. I finished a gallery, posted the link on Facebook, and families could go directly to the images from that game. Facebook was not where the photographs lived, but it was the road most people used to get there.

That road is changing.

Facebook has started rolling out new limits around external links. Some professional pages are being limited to two posts with outside links per month unless they pay for one of Meta's subscription plans. It does not appear to be affecting every page in exactly the same way yet, but it is real enough that ignoring it would not be much of a plan.

Two link posts per month may work for some businesses. It does not work very well when I can photograph three games in two days.

On Tuesday, I covered the WMS seventh and eighth-grade football games against Johnstown, along with the cheer teams on the sideline. The first game started in late-day light. By the second, the stadium lights were doing the work. That meant changing exposure, watching shutter speed, and making sure the camera could still hold focus as the field got darker.

The R5 with the 70-200mm f/2.8 handled most of that evening. I also continued working with the R7, using the 300mm f/4 and the 50-100mm f/1.8 during the seventh-grade game. Each combination gave me something different, but the lesson was the same as last week: reach is useful until the play, reaction, or person I want is suddenly much closer than expected. There is no single setup that covers everything happening on a football sideline.

Wednesday was an eighth-grade volleyball game against Lakewood. That was a completely different technical problem. The field became a gym, the long lens gave way to a 24-70mm, and distance was replaced by speed. I was working around 1/1000 of a second at f/2.8 and ISO 2000 because a set, hit, block, and reaction can all happen before there is time to reconsider the settings.

Between those two evenings, I exported 351 finished photographs.

That number matters here because each gallery is its own event. The seventh-grade families are looking for their game. The eighth-grade families are looking for theirs. The volleyball families should not have to dig through a football post and hope they find the right doorway. These are not random links I am trying to scatter across Facebook. They are how people get to the work they came to see.

I understand that Facebook is a business, and I am not interested in turning this into a speech about what a social media company should or should not charge for. I am also not interested in building the only path to my galleries on a platform that can change the rules whenever it wants.

So I need a better system.

Facebook will still be useful. It is where many parents, athletes, coaches, and community members already are, and it remains a good place to share a few favorites and let people know that new work is available. But I want Facebook to become the announcement, not the address.

The address should be my own site where image compression and file count are controlled by me, not a social media site.

I am working on a clearer way for people to start at https://prints.jdonnellphoto.com, choose their school or sport, and find the current galleries without needing a brand-new Facebook link every time I finish a game. That may include more consistent landing pages, pinned directions, QR codes at events, and gallery notifications for people who want them. I am still working through the details, but the goal is simple: fewer dead ends and less guessing.

This is not a dramatic breakup with Facebook. It is just an honest recognition that social media is rented space. It can help people discover the work, but it should not be the only place that knows where the work is.

That feels especially important going into next week. I was asked to photograph the women's varsity soccer game next Thursday for Senior Night. That is more than another game on the schedule. Senior Night is one of those events where the action matters, but so do the introductions, families, teammates, and small moments around the field. Those photographs will mean something different a year from now than they do the night I post them.

They deserve a home people can find again.

That is the part I keep coming back to. Taking the picture matters. Editing it well matters. Delivering it in a way that does not make families work to find it matters too.

The photograph is not really finished when I export the JPEG. It is finished when it reaches the people it was made for.

~Jeremy