Category Archives: Sports Photography General

Shutter Lag

Posted by Scott on November 16, 2009 None comments

Shutter Lag
Even if you don’t know what the words mean, shutter lag, you’ve probably experienced it.  You have your camera at the ready, you’ve composed the shot, the athlete is now in position and you press the shutter button at the exact moment you want to capture the perfect picture…………….but the camera doesn’t take the photo, it waits for what’s seems an eternity and then fires.  You find the resultant photo is not the one you had prepared for, the athlete is not framed properly or they are now in an awkward looking position, or it’s out of focus all because the camera delayed in taking the photo. 

This is what is known as shutter lag.  Sports photographers need cameras that shoot with minimal shutter lag and shoot quickly. You the sports photographer can also take steps to reduce this lag and not miss photo opportunities or poorly capture them. 

What is it?
Shutter Lag is the delay between pushing the shutter button and the camera recording the picture on the image sensor.  Whereas the shutter lag on a film camera was minimal and primarily a result of the mechanics of the aperture opening and closing, digital cameras have that lag plus the processing of the image.  There are many steps the camera must take prior to and when taking a photo, all of which are not related to the shutter, but practically speaking shutter lag is the time from when you press the shutter button until the time the camera takes the photo.  A lot must happen during this time.  Your camera adjusts the focus, exposure and white balance then it opens the aperture, captures the light on the image sensor, converts the light to a digital representation and writes it to your memory card.  That’s a lot to do in a short amount of time and while electronic circuitry and processing is improving shutter lag continues to be a factor.

What can you do about it?
As a sports photographer there are a number of things you can do about it.  The first and most obvious is to buy a camera with a short shutter lag.  You will find measurements in the specifications and it never hurts to test the camera out on a sport you want to shoot.  Even the best digital cameras still experience shutter lag but there is still more you can do.

Prepare in advance
The work you camera must do can be significantly reduced by preparing your camera in advance.  When you push the shutter button half-way down you are telling your camera to focus and make the proper adjustments.  Continue holding the button down, and then when you press the rest of the way down it will more quickly take the photo.  This is not always possible when shooting sports, but when you can it will help you reduce shutter lag.

Anticipate
This is another trick that can reduce shutter lag.  Anticipating or predicting where the action will be occurring will allow you to shoot the camera a bit ahead of the actual shot you want to get.  By anticipating what will be happening next and shooting the camera just before that moment you will capture the exact moment you want.  The more you shoot a particular sport the better you will become and you will find yourself capturing magnificent photos and not noticing the shutter lag at all.

Continuous or Burst Mode
Good sports photography cameras will have a continuous mode or burst mode.  When set to this mode, when you press and hold the shutter button, the camera will take a rapid set of photos one right after the other as quickly as it can.  This can make the art of anticipating a bit easier since you can begin before the action and end afterwards.  This will increase your chances of getting that perfect action photo.

Increased Shutter Speed
Another way to reduce shutter lag is to shoot with a faster shutter speed.  You will be doing this often anyway as you attempt to capture sports and freeze the action.  This way you will obtain clear photos without blur.  In low-light conditions if you increase the size of the aperture or opening you will allow more light to reach the sensor in less time allowing you to use a faster shutter speed.  This will help you to freeze motion for sharp clear photos.

Decrease the photo resolution
By lowering the quality and thus the size of the photo you are taking allows your camera to process the information faster, since there is less information to process.  Just common sense really, if your resolution is set to 8 megapixel per photo, the processor in your camera must process all those pixels, convert them to digital numbers and write them to your memory card.  Obviously your camera will take less time to process fewer mega pixels, so shooting at a quality mode that requires 4 mega pixels will process quicker.  Pick a quality mode on your camera that meets your needs, but still helps you reduce the shutter lag. 

And don’t forget to practice and practice and take many photos.  This will improve your timing as well as give you a chance to capture some great sports shots while learning to compensate for shutter lag.

ProPix Photography
The Sports Photographers

What is Fast Glass or a Fast Lens?

Posted by Scott on November 9, 2009 None comments

When you hear sports photographers talk you will often hear them talking about fast glass or fast lenses.  What does that mean and why are they important for sports.

A fast lens refers to the size of the aperture opening.  The larger the opening the more light that is allowed to reach the sensor.  Because more light reaches the sensor more quickly, through the larger opening the shutter does not have to be open as long.  A faster shutter speed is better for freezing or capturing the motion in sports.  Fast glass allows you to shoot with faster shutter speeds which is a good thing when trying to freeze fast action.  It’s also a tremendous help in low-light conditions.  As the light get worse or less bright the longer the shutter must remain open, but since the aperture opening is larger more light is able to reach the sensor.

You can tell the speed of the lens or the speed of the glass by looking at the f-numbers associated with it.  The smaller the f-number the faster the glass.  It can be a bit confusing since what that means is the smaller the number the larger the opening/aperture.  So a f/2.8 lens is considerably faster than a f/5.6 lens.  That means the aperture in the f/2.8 lens can get much larger than the aperture in the f/5.6.  To give you a feel the f/5.6 lens will do well outdoors in good light, but you will need a f/2.8 or faster for low-light indoor sports.

You might be thinking well let’s just make a lens that has a huge aperture.  There are a couple of limits and challenges to that.  The larger the aperture the less depth of field in your photos, or in other words the narrower focus your photos will have.  The other challenge is cost.  The faster the glass the more expensive it is.  So fast lenses are more expensive, the lower the f-number is on the lens you are looking at the more expensive it will be.  So………you will have to make the decision, but there is nothing like the quick focusing beautiful photos a fast lens can help you take.

Low-light sports would be extremely difficult and require very fast glass if not for the improved sensors and their ability to collect light.  In the days of film fast glass was even more important because trying to use a high ISO film would cause a lot of grain.  In this digital age the sensors are much better and higher ISO settings can help compensate in low-light conditions without a significant increase in graininess.

There’s a lot to remember and it can be a bit technical, but for sports photography simply remember that a fast lens or fast glass will give you better shooting options in low light conditions, and that a fast lens has a low f-number.  Fast glass is essential for indoor sports photography where you will often be in  school gyms that have inadequate or poor lighting.  Fast glass is essential for you to catch or freeze the action and still have plenty of light reach the sensor.

The lens does not the sports photographer make, but it is extremely helpful and will make a good photographer better and a great photographer fantastic.

ProPix Photography
The Sports Photography Professionals

What Lens should I buy for my Camera?

Posted by Scott on November 2, 2009 None comments

You spent hours upon hours studying which camera you should buy, you spoke to people got feedback you went online and searched reviews and finally made your decision.  Then the next question you ask is what lens should I buy for my camera?  The answer to this question is as important as which camera to buy, has as much or more importance on the quality of your photos and will likely cost more than your camera, and is even a more important question for sports photographers.

One of the benefits of a Digital SLR is that you can exchange the lens.  So to buy just one lens makes no sense you really need more than one.  The right answer is is not which one lens but which lenses should I buy?  Have you noticed how prices on cameras and camera bodies continues to decline but the cost of lenses remains the same.  This tells you something about the importance of a good lens.  I’m amazed at all the discussions about cameras when in reality there should just as much discussion on which lens or lenses to buy.  Even if you’re not an expert photographer you can dramatically improve the quality of your photos by using high quality lenses. 

Low End
At the low end of the lens market are lenses made with plastic mounts, slow aperture and low quality.  These are lenses that you will often find at low-end retail outlets and are often the lenses offered as part of a camera package deal.

Prime Lenses
These are lenses that have no zoom capability.  You must zoom by moving your feet which is to reposition yourself.  Zooming that way will certainly save you money but is not as convenient.  Many purists will say that the sharpest photos for the money will be achieved with a prime lens.

Zoom Lenses
These are lenses that let you zoom closer and further away by simply turning the zoom ring.  This is by far more convenient, but here is where you will pay for that convenience.  If you don’t buy a high quality zoom lens then you most likely will be disappointed in the sharpness of your photos.  So, for convenience there are two lenses that make the most sense for the family photographer or sports photographer and that is a small lens something like 24mm – 70mm and then a larger lens 70mm-200mm.  The 70-200mm is my favorite and the lens I shoot almost all my sports with.  In addition to sports it is the lens for school programs, piano recitals, and performances.  It does well in low light and in many ways it makes an average photographer a great photographer.  The small lens you will find perfect for team photos and close-ups. 

Costs
OK, I admit it these lenses can be very expensive.  The Cannon and Nikon versions which I prefer are spectacular and I believe worth every penny.  There are other brands that will save you $100s and will still give you a good photo especially as you become a better photographer yourself. 

Scott

ProPix Photography

The Sports Photography Professionals
The Practical Photographer

A Quick Look at flickr

Posted by Scott on October 25, 2009 None comments

 view_photo

If you have been taking photos for a while you have most likely heard of flickr. Put simply flickr is an online photo sharing website where users can upload their photos and short videos to share with the rest of the world. Flickr is the largest and most active photo sharing site at this time and is the most accepted by armatures as well as pro photographers.

Uploading your sports photos is fairly strait forward. Once you have logged in you click the down arrow next to the “You” menu item at the top of the screen and then select upload photos and videos from the drop-down menu. Once you are there you click the Choose photo text which brings up a new window of what is on your local computer. Some of the photo organizers such as Windows Live Photo Gallery include a button that enables you to upload your selected photos within that application so you don’t have to login to your flickr account in your browser. Others such as Picasa have third party plug-ins you can install to give similar functionality. I would actually recommend using one of these options over the online offering flickr has built in.

plublish_to_flickr

Flickr offers many of the basic features of most other photo sharing sites such as organization, tags and ordering prints but it also goes beyond this allowing you to do a fair amount of editing of your photos online. You can do your normal crop, rotate, and resize that others might offer but you can also adjust the color, sharpen and fix red-eye. In addition to fixing your photos you can also use their create feature.

In the create tool box you are given a plethora of filters and options you can use to modify and play with your photos. You can add a number of shapes to your photo or add a variety of frames and text. It’s just like having a photo editing program running in your browser.

photo_editing

Unfortunately this editing service is provided by Picnik and not all of the features are free. If you want full access to all of the options you will have to pay a $24.95 a year fee. This also brings up the point that flickr itself has a basic plan which is absolutely free but they also provide a premium plan which costs $24.95 a year note that even though this is the same price as the picnic service it does not include the premium options available through picnic. If you do decide to upgrade your flickr account you get unlimited storage and you can also able to upload videos. If you just want to stick with the free account you are allowed to upload 100 MB worth of photos each month. Keep in mind this is calculated by uploaded data and not storage. For example say you uploaded 50 photos and that used 50 MB of your transfer limit. So if you then delete 25 of your photos off of flickr you do not get 25 MB of your monthly limit back because it is the transfer amount and not the storage amount. If you are just a casual user and don’t want to store your entire photo library on flickr you should be just fine with the free account they provide.

Flickr comes with a great way of organizing you photos but it can be a little confusing at first. You organize your photos into sets. These are what you would probably think of as folders on your computer. The only difference that I can tell is that you cannot create a new set inside of another set. You can add photos to your sets easily by just dragging and dropping the thumbnails at the bottom of the screen into the big box they provide above.

Another great feature flickr has to offer is called groups. This feature lets you send certain types of photos to the same group as other people. An example might be you and your family members setup a group for the 2008 family reunion. Now everyone with a flickr account can submit photos that they took at the family reunion to that same group. This makes it very easy for everyone to get their photos collected into one location.

Overall flickr is a cool way to share your sports photos with the rest of the photography world. There is a bit of a learning curve to get through at the beginning but once you do surpass it you will be a flickr pro in not time.

Terance

ProPix Photography

The Sports Photography Professionals

Shooting Indoor Sports

Posted by Scott on October 12, 2009 None comments

Indoor Sports
Getting great sports photos indoor can be a real challenge.  While professional sports photographers shoot in arenas that have been designed with them and the television producers in mind, you are shooting in old school gyms, performance halls and other poorly lit facilities.  You will also be using good equipment, but most likely not using pro lenses that can run $8,000+.  The good news is if you will follow the tips below you will still be able to capture great sports photos like the pros.

Location, Location, Location
Just as in real estate where the best location makes for the best pricing and resale, the best location at indoor sports will make for the best photos.  Find a spot right on the floor close to the athletes or an elevated position that is still close enough.  You want to fill the frame with many of your shots and depending on the size of your lens, being close is almost always better.  There not just one best location, you will want to change positions and take shots from a variety of angles and different locations around the competition area.  By doing this you will have unique shots that will give variety to the shots you are taking.  You will also need to be mobile to catch all the athletes since in most sports they will be moving and changing directions.

White Balance
As a sports photographer you will invariably be faced with event locations that have insufficient lighting.  School gyms and performance halls have not been designed for optimum photographic lighting.  In addition, during many sporting and athletic events the lights are dimmed or turned down as part of the event.  In addition to low-light you will have to deal with a variety of different types of lights including florescent. 

Your best solution is to take practice shots and get to the best color you can on your LCD screen.  You will be able to make adjustments post event on your computer, but that takes time and you want to get it the best you can the first time.  So start on automatic and see how well that looks.  Then try some of the other pre-defined white balance settings such as florescent.  The best way is to try a few and then choose the setting that gives you the best visual representation of the scene. 

ISO & Shutter Speed
You have a double challenge, enough light for your photos and freeze the action so your photos are not blurry.  The image sensor on your camera must receive enough light to allow your photo to be bright, yet you can’t leave the shutter open so long that the movement is blurry.  So your shutter speed must be fast enough to capture the action.  Fortunately a good Digital SLRs will help you to do just that.  You have a number of options.  You can leave the camera in programmed mode and increase the ISO.  You may have to increase the ISO to 800, 1250 or even 1600 where I tend to shoot most of my indoor sports held in school gyms. 

In programmed mode the camera will intelligently set the aperture and shutter speed to compensate.  You will find this to often be a good solution, and obviously easy to do since all you do is set the ISO.  If you want to take more control yourself try setting the aperture as wide open as you can (low f/stop number), and let the camera pick the shutter speed.  It might feel a little backwards, but we have found this to work better than to set the shutter speed.  Of course if you want ultimate control go to manual and set both yourself.

Faces
Don’t forget the most important part of the sports photo is the athlete’s face.  Find locations that will allow you capture the faces of the athletes.  Be aware of obstacles and other challenges that may hinder your ability to catch their face.  When you capture the athlete’s face along with the ball, or other elements of the sport or competition you will have sport photos that everyone will love, and the athlete and family even more.

ProPix Photography
The Sports Photographers

Abstract the World

Posted by Scott on October 5, 2009 None comments

 

One of the great things about photography is that you can view the world in a different way. With the use of different lenses and lighting effects you can take ordinary things around you and modify them in ways the human eye alone could never see.

Play with the light.

The natural light all around us can be a fantastic tool to work with. When possible try to take advantage of this. When I’m shooting for abstract sports photos or just having some fun, I could care less about how much noise is in my photo. Often times this can actually give it more character. Try and have a really bright light in the background of your photo, or maybe in the foreground. The point is to try different things. The more you play with the light the more you will get familiar with the different effects you can achieve, not just for abstract photos but in general as well.

Try a different angle.

Another fun thing to try is moving the camera or yourself in positions you wouldn’t normally photograph in. Try taking photos while holding the camera at waist side, or at a crooked angle. Get down closer to the ground or stand on a ladder or stool. You will find that different angles and heights can change things dramatically. Just as film makers use these techniques in the movies, you can use them in your sports photos as well.

Often looking for angles and patterns for your photos can be yet another way to make them more interesting to the eye. Just by tilting the camera a bit may give your photo that extra something that makes it go from an okay shot to a fantastic photograph.

Use that lens.

Try different focal lengths, in other words, zoom in as tight as you can and take the shot. You will never know what kinds of detail you may pick up. Conversely try some wide angles at different positions. You can achieve some really dramatic emotions using a super wide angle lens.

Keep practicing.

Experiment with different sports. This could include the family on the trampoline in the back yard or jump roping on the driveway.  Try and think of the most ordinary part of the sport practice photographing it in exciting new ways. This will improve your skills in seeing things in a less than ordinary way.

My last suggestion would be to just practice, and as always, have fun with it. Remember, you don’t have to go to a professional sporting event to get some cool and interesting shots.

Use Photoshop Elements to Create a Collage

Posted by Scott on September 28, 2009 None comments

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is the best sports photography image editing software I have used for someone who wants a little more control over editing their sports photos than the most basic features offered in most photo organizers and don’t want to pay the insanely high price that Adobe Photoshop CS4 costs. I won’t go into the details of the overall program in this article, but rather focus on one feature that many may find useful when they are feeling creative.

The collage feature lets you place a number of photos onto a single page in a variety of designs. You are given the options to rearrange and size each photo individually to your preference. After creating your collage you are can then save or print the final output. This is a great way to send a family member or friend the shots from last weeks soccer game in a fun and unique way.

The first thing you need to do is find the photos you want to use for your collage. You can either grab your photos from the organizer or just drag and drop them from your file folder to the Photoshop Express workspace.

gathering_photos

If you are in the organizer you can simply select the photos, click the create tab and select Photo Collage. If you have dragged the photos directly into Photoshop Express, you can click the create tab as well and select Photo Collage as well.

Now you have a variety of templates you can choose from. You will want to click the template you want to use and then click the done button near the bottom right of the window.

Collage_Tab

Photoshop Express will now place the photos you had selected into one template file. If you happened to have selected more photos than would fit on one template, it will give you multiple pages you can select from at the bottom of the window. Now that you have a basic layout, you can start working on arranging and resizing the individual photos.

building_collage

To move a photo to a different place, you just click and drag it around the window. To resize the photo you click on the photo you want to work with and click and drag a corner of the photo until it’s the size you would like. You may also notice a circle icon underneath the photos as well. If you click and drag this icon it will rotate your photo depending on which direction you drag your mouse. Alternatively you can simply click and drag your mouse outside of the photo boundaries to rotate your photo as well. You may also want to note that after doing your adjustments you may need to click the green check mark that appears or press the Enter key on your keyboard. This will finalize your adjustments and let you continue editing other photos.

There are a number of other options you can use found under a menu accessed by right clicking on the photo you want to use them on. For example to send a photo behind another one, right click on the front photo and select “Send Backward”. You can also resize the photo to fill more of the frame that it is constrained to through the same menu. It’s also worth noting that your photos are simply different layers on your one file. This means that if you go back to the edit tab, you can do all the adjustments you would normally have access to.

edit_menu

Once you are happy with your final creation, you can simply save it, print it, or do whatever other tasks you would do to any other file created in Photoshop Express.

Terance

ProPix Photography

The Sports Photography Professionals

Sports Photography Cleaning Your Lens

Posted by Scott on September 20, 2009 None comments

Have you ever noticed small blotches starting to appear on all of your photos taken with your DSLR? This could mean that either your lens is dirty, or your camera’s sensor has picked up some dust. I strongly recommend you try cleaning the lens before working on the sensor.

Your lens can be expensive, so you should take care not to damage it while cleaning it. You should also be cautious of over cleaning. If it doesn’t need cleaning, don’t clean it. Cleaning too often creates a risk of damaging the lens.

One way to actually protect the glass of the lens is to use a UV filter. This can be especially important in sports photography where you will often be outdoors in harsh environments or indoors with many people.  You can pick these up and place them on your lens at all times to keep the glass underneath safe from scratches. The other advantage is that you will then be cleaning the filter rather than the lens itself.

Before you wipe your lens down with any type of cloth or tissue, you should first blow away any large dust particles. You don’t want to do this with your mouth as you may actually get saliva on the glass. It is much better to get a small blower specifically made for camera cleaning. Make sure you squeeze it a couple times to clear any dust that may have made it’s way inside.

One of the safest methods to clean your lens is to simply breath hot hair on it and wipe it down with a cloth. This can be safer than applying harsh chemicals. If that doesn’t do the job, you can pick up a cleaning fluid at your local camera shop. When applying this fluid make sure you don’t use too much each cleaning session. You will rarely if ever need any more than a drop or two. Make sure you apply the fluid to the cloth first, and then in a circular motion, wipe around the lens to clear off smudges and fingerprints that may have accumulated.

While you are picking up the lens cleaning fluid, make sure you grab some cleaning tissue or a cleaning cloth as well. Use one of these methods to apply the liquid and wipe down the lens. The cleaning tissues are for one time use only, so make sure to toss any used tissues out. As for the cleaning cloth, you can usually just wash them after each use. If they do start collecting too much dust or debris throw it out and purchase a new one. There is no reason to risk the damage it may cause.

You should definitely keep your lenses clean so that your sports photos don’t suffer, and once you understand the basics it’s a snap to keep them in top shape.

ProPix Photography

The Professional Sports Photographers

What is a Tag

Posted by Scott on September 14, 2009 None comments

 tagging

If you have been working with a photo organizing application in the past couple of years you may have heard the word “tag”. Put simply tags are a way for you to find your photos more quickly and easier than manually searching through thousands and thousands of individual photos.

Technically a tag is just descriptive words that are saved into the photo file itself. This means that whenever you add a tag to your photo that information will stay with that photo. You will be able to copy it to a CD or upload it to your favorite online photo sharing site and the tag information will still be there.

There are a number of tag types you can add to your photos. For example you can add a title tag, descriptive tags, an author, and a number of other types. What tags you are able to add will depend on the software you are using. Some applications will let you add more types of tags than others. For example one application may allow you to add a GPS tag while another may not. This also brings up the point of compatibility.

Some applications may use a non standard way of adding the tag information to your file. This can be a major problem if you decide to use another program that doesn’t support the way that the other program added the tag information. The best way to find out is to try adding some tags in one application and then try to see that information in another application. If the other application can see the tag information than most likely you are safe. You should also be able to find out by either searching around on the applications website or just do a search on the Internet. I have found that all the programs I’ve used in the past year or so have all at least implemented the common tag types in a standard way. If you are still not sure or don’t trust the photo organizer you are using, you can always get a tool dedicated to adding tags such as Microsoft Pro Photo Tools or iTag. Both these solutions will allow you to tag all of your family photos without worrying about not being able to read that information later.

Before we go any further let’s look at an example of what kinds of tags we would typically want to apply to our photos.

soccer player

As you can see from the image above there are a couple tags that have already been entered in for me. This includes the date the photo was taken, the camera that took the photo and a few other technical details. You can also see that there are a number of these tags that I can not change such as what settings I had the camera set to when taking the photo. The tags I am interested in adding are the descriptive tags and the caption. The descriptive tags should be something like soccer game and soccer tournament. The descriptive tag should be a quick summary of the photo. Something like State Cup Soccer Tournament would do just fine for this photo. All I do to add these tags is click just underneath the headings, where it says to add a caption or description. It then allows me to type in what information I want. Below is the same photo with the tags added.

soccer_tags_added

Depending on the program you are using it will vary where and how you add tags to your photos, but most of them will have a dedicated box just for this purpose. They may not call it a tag but rather something like “Add a description”.

Now that we have learned a little about tagging and how to add them, let’s talk about the benefits of doing all this work. The number one reason for tagging your photos in my opinion is to be able to find the photos you want quickly and easily. Let’s say you took photos at Grandpas birthday a couple years back and now Grandma is putting together a scrapbook and she needs some photos from the event. If you tagged these photos with birthday and grandpa it should be a snap to find them. Again depending on how your application does search this may vary, but let’s take a look at how we can find the cow photo above.

gallery

In the picture above it shows my main gallery with a total number of photos at 5539. Now on the left side you can see I can sort these by folder, date taken, people, or descriptive tags. To find my photo of the cow I can just click the “Cow” tag under descriptive tags. This Windows Live Gallery also provides me with a search box at the top in which I could also type in the word cow to bring up all the photos that contained the tag cow. In addition to sorting with one tag, you can select multiple tags at one time to fine tune your results. This would be perfect for finding that photo of Grandpa as you could find all the photos that contained both Grandpa and Birthday.

As you can see adding tags to your photos can be extremely helpful and if you add your tags each time you copy your photos from your camera to your computer it really doesn’t take much time at all.

Terance

ProPix Photography

The Sports Photography Professionals

The Sport and the Emotion

Posted by Scott on September 7, 2009 None comments

You have the right equipment, you have read the basic instructions, well get out there and start practicing.  The only way to get better is practice, practice and more practice.  Just like the athletes you are trying to photograph who are training and practicing, you must do the same to be a good sports photographer.  Practice at any and all events, share the photos you take with family, friends and team mates.  They will let you know the ones they REALLY like.  Your timing and anticipation will improve and your ability to get the easy shots as well as the tough ones will grow.  If you’re in the business of selling photos then the ones that sale or not will let you know what’s good and what’s not.

Faces of the Game (The Emotion)
Don’t forget there is a lot of fun, emotion and action before, in the middle and after the event or competition.  I like to refer to these as the faces of the game.  Surprisingly perhaps, these photos, the faces and emotions of the game are as popular as any of the great action shots you will take. I especially like half-time when faces are full of emotion, sweat, determination and grit.  Besides they are sitting quietly paying attention to the coach, drinking water or whatever.  Fill the frame with their faces and snap away.  Fill the entire frame with a single face.  Not just 3/4 of the frame fill it all and you will love the results.  Close-ups like that fill the photo with emotion and make it memorable.  These are not posed photos, it’s even best when they don’t know you’re taking the photo.  Move around or sneak around all you need, to ensure you get a clear shot at the face.  Keep that bigger lens on the camera so you don’t have to get close.  You will also find jubilation and sadness both strong emotions after a game, and a chance to catch team-mates hugging and groups cheering as well.  Don’t forget coach who deserves a nice close-up as well.

Easy Shots
If it’s an event and you want to make sure you get at least some good photos and not sure if you can, make sure to get the easy shots.  The close-ups discussed above are what I would call easy shots, but there are any more.  Each sport has it’s own.  They may be shots during warm-up, foul shots during the basketball game, warm-up pitches in baseball, throw-ins and corner kicks in soccer.  These are all easy shots that will mean you’ll have at least some from the event.  It will get you off to a good start and will ensure you at least have something at the end.

Blurring can be good
We’ve talked a lot about how to get a crisp and sharp photo, but there are times when you might want blur or when a blurred photo showing the action is actually a good thing.  The blur gives the impression of movement which is definitely occurring so that’s not always a bad thing.  Perhaps it’s the ball in the pitcher’s hand as it’s thrown, or the ball leaving the soccer players foot.  Whether on purpose or accident this is not always a bad thing, and will give variety to to your photos.
So, get out there and practice, you’ll be the next world-renowned family sports photographer!

ProPix Photography

The Sports Photography Professionals