Sport photography
About sport photography ( part one )
Sports Photography Tips
Introduction
Sports photography is one of the few remaining pure forms of documentary photography. The moment happens and it is gone. You either capture it in an image or you don't. Unlike sports writers and television, still photographers don't have the luxury of instant replay.
At its best, great sports photography captures not only the tremendous skills and abilities of the athletes in action, but also the passions and emotions of those involved in the game. The best sports photojournalism also tells the story of what happened in the game.
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So you want to be a sports photographer?
It can be a great job if you love sports and photography. You get into the games for free. You get the best seats in the house, and you get paid to do it!
However, it is not easy to make a full-time living as a sports photographer. You have to be very good at the craft. You have to be lucky to have the opportunity because the odds are really against you because there are very few full-time sports photography jobs available. You also have to be a good business person.
On the other hand, if you just love sports and photography, and don't need to make a living at it, it can be extremely rewarding and a lot of fun!
On the following pages, I'll try to tell you about what it takes to be a sports photographer, and how to take great sports photos.
Sports Photography Tips
Shooting Techniques"The Truth is realized in an instant. The act is practiced step by step."
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To shoot peak action, you will need a high shutter speed. Usually a minimum of 1/500th of a second. If there is not much light, you will need to use a high ISO and a fast lens with a wide aperture to be able to use a high shutter speed.
To capture the critical moment, you simply have to be there and take the picture when it happens. This is the zen of it, but the devil is in the details.
- Master your craft and your equipment
Know your cameras and lenses inside and out. You should know things like which way the shutter speed dial turns to increase the exposure without having to look at it.
Check the focus on your camera bodies and lenses periodically. Things do get out of whack.
This photo of a football flip that happened right on top of me was taken with a manual focus camera. I just swung the camera, focused and fired at the same time. I did it instinctively because I had years of practice doing this and didn't need to think about which way to focus the lens. Later,
2. Use Your Vision
Watch what is happening.
No, really: SEE what is happening!
Learn to use your peripheral vision, especially in the eye that is not looking through the camera. Keep that other eye open! Teach yourself to pay attention to what's going on in that other eye. Not only does it stop your vision from getting fatigued faster, your brain expects to be getting visual signals from both eyes.
Eyes change with age. If you make your living with your eyes, get them checked regularly! Even if you don't shoot full time, get your eyes checked regularly. Your eyes are your primary interface with the rest of the world.
In the example of Nigeria Jumps, I was concentrating on the runner who had won the race, when I saw this out of the corner of my eye. It was better than the winner!
3. Be Prepared
Research who and what you need to be looking for in a game. Talk to the coaches and writers and find out what might be of special interest and who the star players are.
Know the game. The mental part of sports action photography is very similar to actually playing sports. You must have a knowledge of the basic rules of the sport you are shooting, as well as knowledge of the sport's patterns and ebbs and flows of action. Having a thorough knowledge of a sport, say from having actually played it on an advanced organized level, can be invaluable. Study it on TV (gasp!), but remember, shooting at ground level looks very different from most overhead elevated TV camera positions.
Constantly check things like the exposure if the light is changing, and make sure you don't run out of film (or digits) just when the critical play happens. Make sure you have film in the camera to start with.
Always keep a short lens around your neck pre-focused for where something might be likely to happen. For football, I keep a 50mm lens around my neck focused at 15-20 feet for those plays that happen right on top of me that are too tight for the long lens.
If something critical happens out of the blue, make the picture with whatever lens you are holding, don't worry if it's not the perfect focal length.
In the Frankie Mitchell example, I was shooting with a camera with an 85mm lens on it, when Mitchell knocked out his opponent on the other side of the ring. He then ran across the ring and stopped right in front of me and jumped in the air. I grabbed the camera with the 24mm lens that I had around my neck and shot. I still don't know how I managed to turn it vertical. I guess it was just instinct.
4. Get in position
Always try to pick out a shooting position that will give you a clean or interesting background and separate the action in the foreground from the background. Most of the herd of photographers will shoot from the front lit side, try going against the grain and shooting from the back lit side. You will increase your chances of getting something different from the pack, and it will be less crowded giving you more room to work, and you will actually have an easier time holding shadow detail
5. Focus - Auto focus cameras may have solved most problems of follow-focus, but they won't get you the picture in every situation. Learn these other techniques:
6. Timing
You have to anticipate what is going to happen. If you wait until you see it, it is over and you have missed it. It takes 200 milliseconds for a visual perception to register in the consciousness. This means that athletes do it on a subconscious level through training of muscle memory and practice. They literally do not have time to see the ball and then think about hitting it. Like Yogi Berra said, "You can't think and hit at the same time."
7. Pay attention
Always expect the unexpected. Stay awake. Don't just stand there and watch when something unusual starts to happen. Don't even try to figure out what it is, press the shutter!
8. Take a chance
Play around sometimes if you start getting bored. It may not work 99 percent of the time, but once in a while you may get something different.
In this example of Pete Sampras winning the finals of the US Pro Indoor Tennis Championship, I shot with a slow shutter speed.
I had been shooting tennis all week, and quite honestly had gotten bored. So for the finals, I decided I would try to get something really different. Not just a different angle, but an entirely different kind of picture.
I shot some traditional high-shutter speed shots for the first couple of minutes to be sure I had something to fall back on in case I totally struck out with my "experiment". But not that many, and certainly not enough to get something really good. I then shot the rest of the match at very slow shutter speeds at around 1/30th of a second. Out of the several hundred frames I shot, I lucked out on this one. The ball seems frozen in time as it reverses directions as it hits the racket, while almost everything else around it is in motion except for Sampras' head, because his vision is locked onto the ball.
9. Stick with the Stars
You can't go wrong with concentrating on exceptional athletes. Good players make good pictures, and great players make great pictures. It's simple... they can do stuff that other people can't!
In this example of Eagle's quarterback Randall Cunningham flying through the air to score a touchdown, many of the above techniques are illustrated.
I like to position myself on the sideline halfway between the goal line and the back line of the end zone. That way I can keep a 50mm lens around my neck on a second camera body with the lens pre-focused on where the goal line meets the sideline.
I started shooting the play with a 300mm lens, but when it became obvious that Cunningham was coming towards the flag near the corner of the end zone where I was positioned, I picked up the short lens with one hand while holding the 300mm lens on a monopod with the other hand. This was in the days of manual focus cameras, and there was no way to focus anyway because the long lens was in the other hand. But because I had pre-focused, I didn't need to focus and I waited and then shot as Cunningham leaped through the air to score.
10.Write good captions
Learn to write captions that add significant information to your photos. The Five W's are for you too. Who, what, why, where and when.
Shoot extra frames after a play that you think might have made a picture. It will be easier to identify players if their numbers are blocked in the good frames. Shoot the clock after critical plays or plays that might have made a good picture.
If you have a digital camera with voice-recording capabilities, record everything about the play as soon as you can after it is over.
Make sure you get the identifications of the players in your images correct. Double check this. Triple check this.
Make sure you get the spellings of all names in your captions correct. Double check these. Triple check these.
This is an example of a good caption. It presents not only the facts, but also explains why the content of the photo is important:
11. K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple, Stupid. My first photo editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Jimmy Pitts, told me this, and I've always had success when following this advice.
When I first started I used to carry every lens I owned in a bag on my shoulder, and I had just about every lens Nikon made. But as I got more experienced, I found that I was usually making pictures with the lenses that I had on the two camera bodies that I used! What a surprise. You can't make a picture with a lens that's not on a camera!
So I started to work with just a short focal-length lens on a camera around my neck, and a long focal-length lens on another body. Usually a 24mm and a 300mm in the days of film, and their equivalents today for digital. Sometimes I carry a tele-extender in a waist bag. But I stopped carrying a shoulder bag with a ton of other lenses in it a long time ago. My back and my shoulder thanked me, believe me.
For journalism, you usually just don't have time to stop and change a lens. If you try, you usually miss the picture. For landscape or architectural photography, you have the time to do this, but not for sports.
For sports, pictures happen at every focal length. You certainly don't have time to change lenses during the play! So, you just have to shoot with what you have. Sometimes the pictures are framed a little loose, sometimes they are a little tight. For some sports you might be able to use a zoom lens, such as for basketball, if you have enough light.
The important thing is to just take the picture with the lens you have when the picture happens.
What could be simpler?
Bad lighting complicates matters because you’ll to bump the ISO, which introduces grain (as you can see in the attached basketball picture). This is where having a fast lens really helps, shooting at f/2.8 or f/4 will give you a lot more leeway as far as shutter speed and ISO, as well as decreasing the amount of post-processing work that you end up doing.
Another thing to consider is using your camera’s “continuous drive” facility. It means that you don’t have to be absolutely precise in your timing, which is good when things are moving quickly. This is also important when you’re making a decision about shooting RAW or JPEG: the camera can fit more JPEG frames in the image buffer than RAW. Generally, 3 images (like my D50) aren’t enough. There’s still one missed shot of a basketball player hanging on the rim that sticks out in my mind.
