Sports Photography Success

Customizing your Photoshop workspace

Posted by Terance on June 19, 2011 None comments

Over the years Adobe has added more and more ways to customize the Photoshop workspace to fit your needs. You may be asking why would you want to change the default. One answer would be that everyone works differently and use different tools. Very few photographers will ever need or use all of the tools available in Photoshop. By customizing the workspace you can get rid of all the clutter and get access to the tools you use everyday. Let’s take a look at a few ways to get the right workspace for you.

default workspace

One of the first things you should do is either shrink or remove the pallets you don’t use. If you never use the navigator pallet why should you have it on your screen taking up space?

The next thing you can do to get rid of the extra stuff is to go into edit/menus and hide the menu items you don’t use. This can make finding the items you want much easier and quicker.

You can even change the font size that Photoshop uses. Just go to edit/preferences/general and change the options for UI Font Size.

Do you want to get a larger preview of your font choices? In the preferences menu switch to the Type item to the left and set the Font Preview Size to a larger size.

One last tip that is not so obvious to change is the background color that is displayed when you zoom out of a photo. By default it is a light gray color but if you select the paint bucket tool, change your foreground color to the color you would like to use. Now while holding the Shift key down left click somewhere on the light gray color and it will change to the color you selected. Below is an example of the color changed from the light gray to a darker gray.

As you can see there are a number of ways to change the look and feel of the Photoshop workspace. I would encourage all Photoshop users to explore these options and make the changes that will make your photo editing quicker and easier.

Get a free copy of PhotoDirector 2011

Posted by Terance on June 13, 2011 None comments

CyberLink known for their media based software is currently offering beta testers a free copy of their new PhotoDirector 2011 software. All you have to do is sign up for the free beta, try out the software and fill out a short survey. They will then send you a free copy of the final version when it is released. You can go to the PhotoDirector beta sign up page to get started.

PhotoDirector appears to be a direct competitor to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It has a similar look and the toolset is also very similar. CyberLink is pricing PhotoDirector $200.00 lower than Adobe’s offering so it is much more affordable to the photographer who is getting started and isn’t making much money from their photography yet.

We will be taking a closer look at PhotoDirector and it’s feature set in the near future so stayed tuned.

Soccer Photography Challenges & Rewards

Posted by Scott on May 30, 2011 None comments

Challenges

Because shooting soccer is challenging, most people do not do it well and thus great soccer photos are appreciated and rewarded. As with most challenges, the more difficult the obstacle, the greater the reward. Here are some of the challenges you will be facing shooting soccer that sportsphotographysuccess.com can help you to overcome:

You Don’t Get to Choose the weather

That’s right. You have to play the soccer game when it’s scheduled and competitive soccer leagues try hard to not reschedule games. You might be trying to take photos in the rain, snow, cold or heat, and you might have to adapt to changing conditions. Those changes may occur during the course of a soccer tournament or even within the timeframe of a single soccer game.

You Don’t Get to Choose the Lighting

No, you don’t get to choose the lighting that soccer will be played in. Besides sunny days you will have cloudy days as well as games that go late with the sun going down. Sometimes the sun will be straight overhead and other times low on the horizon causing shadows and dark faces. Cloudy days may provide low light conditions all of which cause challenges for the soccer photographer.

You Don’t Get to Choose the Moment

Sorry, no posing those soccer athletes. No saying, "Okay I’m ready go ahead make that move, steal that ball or shoot on goal." If you don’t anticipate it, you’ll miss it. If you saw the perfect shot, you just missed it, and invariably the moment you stop for a break is the moment you miss the shot you were waiting for. Great soccer photo opportunities happen throughout the game. You have to be ready at any moment to capture them.

These are just a few of the many challenges you will be facing trying to shoot soccer, including caring for and protecting your equipment, choosing the right equipment, learning how to be in the right position for good shots, and much more.

So, with all those challenges, do you have any chance of capturing amazing soccer shots? Absolutely, and this website and soon to be released book will help you do just that. We have just one purpose in mind—to help you become the best soccer and sports photographer you can!

Rewards

Although the challenges of soccer photography are many and great, the rewards are equally wonderful. When you catch that perfect shot, you’ll find yourself running around the field showing others or emailing like crazy for all to see. There is nothing quite so rewarding as sharing with a soccer athlete the action shot that shows the emotion of the sport and represents the myriad hours they have spent training and working to improve their skills. You will experience hard work, long hours, difficult situations and conditions–but when you capture those great moments, the challenges and the obstacles fade away.

Time for soccer photography

Posted by Scott on April 18, 2011 None comments

It’s that time of year that soccer begins outdoors, at least in our climate, and it’s time to capture great action of my children playing the beautiful game of soccer. What a great sport we love it at our home whether it’s MLS, Premier League, La Liga, World Cup or u10 girls playing 8v8 on a small field we love it.

In the next blogs I will cover tips and tricks to taking great sports photos during soccer games. Soccer presents it’s own set of challenges. You are now outdoors which can be great for lighting, but it can also present challenges with weather on cloudy days, bright sunny days, dusk, rain and just a variety of changing weather.

You are now also presented with the challenge of a much bigger playing area. A regulation size soccer field can be 100-120 yards long and 60-80 yards wide.

In addition you now have perhaps 18 players to capture playing soccer, each playing a different position on this large field.

I will cover ideas on what equipment to use, where to stand how to handle the weather and everything you need to know to take great soccer photos.

So, let’s get ready for a great season of Soccer and have fun capturing some amazing photos of your favorite soccer players.

Scott

Basketball Team Photos – Additional Ideas

Posted by Scott on March 28, 2011 None comments

Different Angles

Experiment. Take your basketball team photos from different vantage points. Especially when shooting a larger team. One great method is to elevate yourself with a ladder or other device. Your shooting angle will be down at the team, which will help to ensure everyone is seen in the photo. Also, the higher angle tends to provide a different and unique view of the athletes. Bleachers are another excellent device for posing your teams. You can use the seats to tier the group upward; however, you still don’t want to place the tall people down in front if you can avoid it.

Take Multiple Shots

This is one time you shouldn’t be hesitant to take multiple shots quickly. You wouldn’t typically switch the camera to continuous shooting mode, but it can often work well, catching them off-guard just as they are relaxing. In fact, we have found that the mere fact of the basketball team hearing your camera go off repeatedly and so quickly will generate a few smiles and laughs. Since it’s hard to get everyone to smile at exactly the right time, take many photos quickly. You will find that the first shot might not be that good, but the second or third will be better because they look a bit less posed and more relaxed.

Use this opportunity to change settings on your camera. Take multiple shots while changing the aperture, shutter, ISO, and white balance. Compare the differences and pick your favorites back at the house. With practice you will find you need to do less and less of this because you will know the best setting for any given circumstances.

Be Creative

If there is a chance at the basketball gym or location to do something unique, go for it. Along with the standard poses, try something different or fun, and your photos will stand out from others. Try standing your athletes in lockers looking out, or lined up in a single row, or lying in a circle. Look around. Take advantage of props unique to the basketball gym or location. Break the rules once in a while! We always do a "fun" shot where subjects can make silly faces and point at each other.

Quick Tips To Enhance Your Photos

Posted by Terance on March 23, 2011 None comments

There are a couple quick things you can do to make your photos stand out just a little bit more than normal. Below are a few quick tips you can use in the editing room to give them just a little extra impact.

Most image editing programs have the following tools at your disposal and are easy to adjust. You also shouldn’t have too much trouble finding the different tools. One thing to remember is that one program will most likely make a different kind of adjustment even if you give it the same value. For example in Photoshop you may move the saturation slider up to +25 and it looks great. If you do the same in Picassa most likely won’t have the same effect so use your own judgment when making adjustments.

Add Saturation

Adding just a little more saturation to your photos can give them a more vibrant look to them. Be careful not to overdue it as you don’t want the players looking like they are oompa loompa’s.

Add Contrast

Just as with adding a little saturation adding a small amount of contrast can give a little more impact to your photos. Once again don’t overdue it. You usually only need to add a small amount to make a big difference.

Sharpen

We covered sharpening in-depth in a previous article but I wanted to mention it again here. Remember to do this step after you have cropped your photo to the size you are going to either print or display on screen to make the most of it.

These are just a few tips to try out that can really make your photos stand apart from just a normal photo so go and give it a shot.

Shooting Basketball Custom White Balance

Posted by Scott on February 21, 2011 None comments

Remember that the purpose of white balance is to ensure the colors in your photos accurately represent the colors as you see them with your eye. If you are not achieving the colors you want in that old dingy basketball gym another option to use the custom or manual white balance setting. Don’t let those words scare you away it’s not that difficult. In some basketball gyms you might find custom or manual the best way to find and then save a color setting that works.

What is custom white balance
In simplest terms you are giving the camera a reference “white” photo from which it can create proper color for your photos. You put the camera in a mode telling it you are going to take a reference white photo, take it and then the camera will do it’s magic. By doing this in the same lighting you will be shooting your basketball photos the camera will help you achieve proper color. Then once you achieve the best white balance you can for that location, if it’s one you come to often, you can save it as one of the presets and you’ll be ready to go each time you come back to that gym. I took the following three shots using various white balance, the first florescent, the second incandescent, and the third a manual white balance using the white wall on the side of the gym.

Incandescent

Fluorescent

Custom

What to use
A number of items can work for your reference shot, from purchasing a white or grey card to using many free items found around your home.

white or grey card (purchased)
3×5 card
coffee filter
pringles lid (at least they are good for something)
Inside of your camera bag (often the proper grey)
White paper or items in the gym

How to do it
Essentially you will tell the camera you are going to do a custom setting, then take a picture of something that is ALL white and then save the setting. Those are the steps. Below are the steps for a Nikon D200, other cameras will be similar only the buttons you press may be different

Step 1 – Place your card or item in the lighting

Step 2 – Change or rotate your WB setting to “PRE”

Step 3 – Fill the viewfinder with white (all white, focus doesn’t matter)

Step 4 – Press the WB button until the PRE begins to flash

Step 5 – Release the WB button; then press the shutter button (taking a photo)

Step 6 – You will now see “Good” or “NoGd” on your display (- Good means you have now set a preset, otherwise do it again)

Saving the results
Your custom white balance is now set and saved. On the D200 you can save up to 5 presets. This can be helpful when you are returning to the same gym to shoot basketball. Once you have the color the way you want it, just remember that location on your presets and don’t overwrite it.

Go try it, it’s not that hard and you might just achieve that beautiful color you’ve been looking for.

Scott

Adjusting the White Balance of your RAW images

Posted by Terance on January 16, 2011 None comments

Getting the correct white balance can be a real challenge in some situations but there is one way that you can get the best possible white balance results every time you take a photo. The secret is to shoot your photos as RAW rather than JPEG. Shooting your photos as a RAW image allows you to adjust the white balance after you have taken the photo! We aren’t going to go into all the details of a RAW image in this article but after reading it you should be able to get started.

One disadvantage to shooting your photos as only RAW (note that some cameras allow you to shoot in both RAW and JPEG) is that you need a program that can read the RAW image. There are a number of commercial and free options out there for you to choose from. Some programs will actually give you more options than others so you may need to do a little research and try a few out before you settle on your favorite. As of this writing Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is considered by many as the number one commercially available program out there for RAW processing. One of our favorite free alternative called RawTherapy is also available. No matter what program you use, there should be a similar way of adjusting the white balance for your photos.

For the purposes of this article we will be using RawTherapy to adjust the white balance of our photo. The first step is to open the photo you would like to adjust.

Most of the programs out there have the controls you are looking for on the right hand side of the screen as shown below.

We want to adjust the white balance of this photo so we need to click on the color tab.

Right at the top you can see it has our white balance settings. To control your white balance you actually have to sliders, the temperature and the tint. The temperature setting will allow you to adjust how worm or cool the lighting was when you shot the photo. The tint control is used to compensate for any green or magenta tint that may be in the image. Most of the time simply adjusting the termerature setting will give you the right setting but if you still aren’t getting what you want try moving the tint slider one way or the other depending on your photo.

The image we are using for this example is a little cooler than we would like. You can see a slight blue tint to the overall image. We need to move the temperature control a little to the warmer side. In addition to the temperature we need to move the tint slider to remove a little bit of the magenta tint. We also adjusted the exposure a small amount to brighten the image up a bit.

Now that we have the image looking the way we want we need to save it out as something we can use more easily. Near the bottom of the window you should see a Save Image button that when clicked will give you some options to save your RAW image into something else such as a JPEG file.

Note that you don’t need to save your original RAW file. Programs such as RawTherapy don’t do any adjustments to your original RAW file but rather save all of settings that you applied to the RAW image in another file. When you go to open your RAW image up again, it looks for the second file it created and loads all of the settings from that file. Note that this second file is fairly small in size because it is just storing the setting information and not any of the image data.

Remember the next time you are shooting in a less than ideal lighting situation and you need to get the white balance right on you may consider switching your camera over to shooting RAW.

Shooting Basketball (Fluorescent Lighting)

Posted by Scott on January 13, 2011 None comments

We’ve talked about the challenges of shooting basketball in old gyms. Let’s get a bit more specific and talk particular types of lighting, starting with Fluorescent lighting. You will find many basketball gyms using fluorescent lights because of the cost savings. Fluorescent lights though cause real challenges in achieving good basketball photos. We are all familiar with those long fluorescent light tubes we see in offices and commercial buildings. This same design continues today, but it has also changed with looped tubes and other tube designs that can often make it difficult to tell by just looking at the light fixture if you are shooting in a fluorescent gym.

A little history and background
Fluorescent lights began being used commercially back in the 1930s. They became popular because fluorescent lights are more efficient than incandescent light. Fluorescent lights are a gas discharge light which means that electricity is used to excite an ionized gas such as mercury vapor. The resulting ultra-violet radiation is converted to visible light with a fluorescent coating on the inside of the lamp. Standard heat temperature ratings (kelvins) do not apply to fluorescent lights, in addition fluorescent lights change over time through usage, making basketball photography under fluorescent light most difficult.

Okay…………..that was probably more than any of us wanted to know and what does that have to do with how you get a good basketball photo…………………

Bottom line
We are real fans of automatic white balance, but basketball gyms and fluorescent lights are one place it usually doesn’t work well. Fluorescent lights typically produce a more warm color in the orange and red range. When that combines with yellow/orange hardwood floors and wood bleachers you can get some very orange photos.
There are primarily three things you can do to improve the color in your basketball photos::

Try the “fluorescent” white balance setting on your camera. That setting will often compensate quite well for the lights.
You can manually set the white balance by shooting something white in the gym and then manually adjusting the white balance. We will cover this in a future blog, it’s not as hard as it sounds.
Shoot in RAW mode and adjust the white balance afterwards. We also plan to cover this in a blog.

So, if your basketball photos are looking real orange, or reddish try that fluorescent setting and see what you get!

Scott

Sharpen Your Photos

Posted by Terance on December 21, 2010 None comments

Sharpening your photos can make a huge difference and in many cases it can be done very quickly and easily. While there are dedicated plugins and programs to do the job, most of the time you probably will not need something as advanced.

Depending on the application you use to edit your photos you may have a number of options available to you when sharpening your photos. If you are using a basic program you may have just one slider that determines the amount of sharpening.

Below is an example of a photo before any sharpening has been applied after the photo was taken. Note that cameras will actually apply a bit of sharpening to your photos when shooting JPEG files.

Now we have a screenshot of the Photoshop sharpening options.

And finally the photo after the sharpening has been applied.

There are a few things to remember when applying your sharpening to your photos. You will want to crop your photo to the final size you will output for. If you are going to print a 5×7 print, crop your photo to a 5×7 before applying any sharpening to it. Another thing you want to avoid is over sharpening. This can give your photo artifacts you may not want. Try to give it just enough to make it pop but not so much that it’s obvious you have applied sharpening. These rules aren’t set in stone and you may want to over sharpen in some situations for an artistic purpose.

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Customizing your Photoshop workspace

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