Sport Photography

Most of this was written with Rugby, at a local level, in mind. It will apply just as readily to other sports though.

You don’t need the newest and most expensive camera out there to get the best shots. You do need a camera with an instant shutter, and you will need a lens that goes out to at least 200mm… at a minimum. Realistically I wouldn’t want to try and shoot sports with a compact camera… but it might be fun to try!



The first and best piece of advice I would offer to anyone thinking of trying their hand at any sort of action photography is that if you see it in your viewfinder, you’ve missed it! You need to anticipate the hit or shot or whatever it may be in the sport you’re watching.



With any sort of sport you also need to watch some before you go and photograph it. You need an idea of what is likely to happen and to click that shutter just at the right time.



If you haven’t shot a given sport before I would also research online ahead of going if possible. There are lots of free resources online now. Look for images of the sport you want to shoot and see what type of photographs have the most impact for you.



The other big question is where to stand for the best shots. Well for rugby, at the level that I shoot at, I can move around the pitch to an extent. I have two areas in particular that I spend most of my time at. Somewhere around the 22 is a good spot. I’m using a 70-200mm lens for rugby right now, and if my subject is more than about 20m away I’m not going to get the shot I want. The 22 gives me a range from the halfway line to the tryline and halfway across the pitch. If play breaks down around the 22 with my team attacking I move round behind the posts and shoot straight on.



Don’t be afraid to crop your photos in post for maximum effect. As long as the image remains sharp, the bigger in frame the better is a simple rule of thumb!



On an overcast day unless you are shooting with professional lenses, you will find it hard to get sharp images later in the 2nd half. Even with professional lenses, in the middle of winter it can be difficult to get a decent shot. If you’re shooting for fun, don’t give up. Just stand behind the posts and ramp up your ISO. You can get some really interesting shots of players coming straight at camera, with less chance of severe motion blur.



If you’ve taken anything from this that’s helped you, let me know!

Pet photography

This was pretty much a one-off. It worked pretty well and I was pleased with the results but I was a little nervous of my lightstands! Pet photography isn't something I've tried much of. The dog behaved perfectly though.

I rolled up with 2 stands & a crossbar, a roll of white paper, another lightstand with a sb-800 and a shoot-thru umbrella. 5 minutes to set-up.

And slightly more unlikely, a cat who cared more about the treats he was being offered than the flashes firing! Great fun.

Party photos

I had someone hold the flash for me on this (high and left), but it would work in a similar way with on cam flash.

ISO 320, F7.1, Shutterspeed anywhere from 1/20th - 2 seconds depending on the effect you want.

The longer the shutterspeed the more light you let in from the background so you can get some pretty funky effects with this approach if you go for a long exposure particularly if there are room lights in the background. The flash will always 'freeze' your subject if you're in a relatively dark environment. This technique is all about livening up the background and giving the shot more life.

This exposure was about 1/2 a second. Enough to leave some movement in there but not too much.

Try it, just make sure you're in a relatively dark room!

Happy Birthday James.

Mix and match and a little photoshop!

I'm writing this after midnight having just finished processing photos from a dance show I covered last Friday. It's been a long day so I'm going to keep this fairly brief.

This is simply a shot lit by one Studio light through a large softbox, placed very close in and the kick light comes from a flash unit placed on the floor back left fired through a snoot to restrict light spill. The studio light is actually only about 2 feet from her, nicely removed in photoshop and replaced with the black background. The closer the light to your subject the gentler the light looks but that's another post!

There's nothing to stop you from mixing studio lights with flash units. If you're just starting out and you're looking to buy one studio light to start with play with it, but once you're ready to try some 2 light setups use a flash for a while until you're ready to splash out.

What do you want to see here?

If there's anything in particular that interests you that you'd like to see more of drop me a comment!

Are you here to look at photos? Do you want more informative posts on lighting and general photography tips?

Let me know what you'd like to see so I can target this for you.

Thanks.

Tom

Taken in the studio quite a while ago, but I love the look on his face so I thought it was worth posting.

Basic composition

I'm not generally much of a landscape photographer, but once in a while I see something that I have to photograph. I love this photo. I took it last year on a family break in North Wales.

One of the reasons that this photo works so well is the 'rule of thirds'. If you placed a noughts & crosses grid across it you'd see that it's neatly broken into thirds horizontally with one vertical third in play as well. It's a simple method to improve your photography. Use it a lot to start with, then once you're sick of it teach yourself when to ignore it!

Of course I couldn't walk away from all of that moss without breaking out the lights and grabbing a quick shot of the kids. Once you're familiar with your equipment it really doesn't take a lot longer than just setting the kids in place. Just one flash unit for this one... on the right, held by my wife! From getting the kids out of the car to all done was probably less than 2 minutes.

Crosslighting with the sun

A simple technique that works beautifully is to have one flash on a light stand, in this case to the back right of my daughter and have the sun front left, with both light sources directly facing each other with your subject in the middle. The best examples of this type of photography that I'm familiar with can be found at the State of the Nation Blog. Set your exposure so that the Sun lights your subject nicely, then slowly build up your flash until you get the result you want, making sure that your shutterspeed is below your max sync speed on your camera. If that means nothing to you, but you want to know more, drop me a comment and I'll go into more detail in these posts to explain!

Sunsets & Flash

Recently went out to Ashdown Forest to take photos of a young couple. It's Callum again from the cricket dive post earlier. We knew before we went that we wanted to get the sunset in there and I decided to light them with a flash on a stand to the left and another on a stand to the right, both with gels on them to match the flash colour to the sunlight. This is a really simple technique once you've tried it a few times and it'll give you good results time and again.

When shooting at sunset start about 40 minutes before sunset and shoot for about 20 minutes after. It's tempting to walk away as the sun goes down, but you will get better light and a prettier background if you wait a little longer. You must keep adjusting your settings as the light changes. I'll cover that in another post.

The technical bit: sb800 w/ cto gel @ 45 deg right. full power @ about 4ft
sb600 w/ cto gel @ 45 deg left. full power @ about 6ft. Started off at F8 1/250th ISO 100 about an hour earlier... Around 1/30th F11 at this point.



While we were waiting for the sunset we tried out a number of different poses and shooting styles. This one was actually Callum's idea. Thanks Callum.

The power of a flash unit

Callum did work experience with me last Summer. It's nice that we;ve kept in touch and done other bits and pieces since. we recently talked about taking some shots to help him promote a cricket tour to Antigua later this year. This is what we came up with. It was a basic net practise and he wanted some shots of the lads just practising. I knew the location and knew I was going to struggle to get what I was being asked for with 'natural' light. I took light stands and flash units anyway and after shooting what I'd been asked for, we agreed to let me try something else.

I set up 2 flash units, 1 directly to the subject's left, 1 to the right. I knew that with natural light 1/250th wouldn't completely freeze motion so reminded of a post at Strobist a few days ago http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/01/control-your-world-with-ultra-high-sync.html . I dropped the exposure until the background turned black and then added the light. 1/250th F5.6 ISO 200 (ish). This was taken in a normal Gym with normal gym lighting switched on.



Pretty pleased with them.

Urban Rugby Calendar : The photoshoot

We arranged to meet at 8.30am on a Sunday morning in September. I was there shortly after 8am to check and prep my kit. By 8.45 there were 12 players with 2 kit bags, 2 sets of kit, a refereee, a physio and a couple of rugby balls.



The plan was to shoot in 8 locations over 4 hours using my Nikon D200 with a 17-55mm F2.8 as the lens along with 2 lightstands, a Nikon sb-800 flash and a Nikon sb-600 flash. I should point out that pretty much everything I know about small flash lighting comes from Strobist. An absolutely fantastic blog run by a guy called David Hobby. He was a photojournalist for 20 years and recently started a year's break to see where his blog, and the community which has formed around it, would take him. There's an associated Flickr Group with over 17,500 members offering an incredible array of images and weeks worth of reading in the discussion pages. Well worth a look. I'll be coming back to Strobist in future posts.



Back on track, most shots were lit with a flash unit to my left and one to my right aimed simply at the main subject. The first shot in this post is a setup shot for the lineout lift. I've used a simple crosslighting setup. One flash front left and one back right as shown in the shot above. When done properly it makes for really dramatic light. One of the best examples I've seen of crosslighting is the State of the Nation blog. He uses sunlight as one light and sets up his flash directly opposite to produce some great images.



I'm not going to run through every shot but a few things are worth mentioning just for the fun of it. One of the first shots of the day was made on a zebra crossing. The main subject was on the pavement on the far side of the road making it look like he was about to throw the ball in..... Once I was ready we had to check the traffic, get everybody to run out in to the road, make the image and clear them away. Luckily at that time on a Sunday morning it wasn't too busy but it was good fun. It was pretty quiet at that time but by the time we got to Tunbridge Wells Station for the stud check on the platform it was getting busier. Lots of attention from the other platform and I think it's fair to say the lads were starting to have fun (hopefully). We shot the picnic in Grove Park.... One of the lads popped into The Compasses pub and asked if we could shoot inside. This was at 10.30am on a Sunday. The landlord was great and even ended up sponsoring a month for us. On to the Pantiles which by this time was really busy. There was a craft fair going on as well which was unexpected so all in all it was probably the most challenging place to shoot, but the results were good.




It was a fantastic morning and although all of the images on this post are outtakes they show that it was a lot of fun and the end result looks good
.