sporting events
While photographing for the Basketball Digest magazine of Century Publishing, (in Evanston, IL) I had to visit several arenas where the NBA was playing. This was prior to the merger of the NBA and the ABA, so I photographed some ABA basketball games also.
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When I had to visit an arena for the first time, I would contact the local newspaper and ask for the Sports Department. I would talk to the photographers who normally cover the games and for the most part, they would share with me the camera settings required for the site. Sometimes my assignment was to shoot B&W, so I would rely on Kodak’s Tri-X film and develop it by pushing it to 800, and when required, to 1600 EI.
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I was familiar with some of the arenas or had enough time to experiment prior to the game. Having done extensive basketball photography, I had a good starting point. For instance, the Atlanta Hawks, prior to the completion of the Omni would play at Georgia Tech. When televised by ABC’s Wide World of Sports, the game would require additional lighting as you can see in the right image. For most of the NBA arenas where I photographed, daylight color (5,000 degrees K) would give me reasonably good results.
Of course, these settings and color considerations are important when photographing indoor sports. In hockey for instance, it is important to use spot metering, so that all the white reflection from the ice doesn’t send the wrong information, affecting the lens aperture.
Of course, these settings and color considerations are important when photographing indoor sports. In hockey for instance, it is important to use spot metering, so that all the white reflection from the ice doesn’t send the wrong information, affecting the lens aperture.
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With outdoor sports, life is much simpler covering games during daylight hours as shown below.
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However, there are some challenges photographing outdoor sports at night time. Not all ballparks are lit the same way. Some even have some dark spots that are hard to avoid. High school football football stadiums are notoriously poorly lit. The image to the left is a good example of a poorly lit high school stadium.
Night-time photography requires you to have a good camera with a an excellent sensor, which is not going to give you excessive noise. If you don’t have a telephoto lens that is fast enough, you will have to push the ISO to the point that is going to show excessive noise, particularly if you have a poor sensor.
Outdoors, daytime sports present no problems with regards to color balance or settings provided that you are not shooting exclusively in a Program or Automatic mode.
The lighting in most colleges and universities are adequate for B&W photography. The 1/500 seconds shutter speed will stop most of the action. That would be my starting point when using the Shutter Speed Preferred setting.
Finally, there are some things that you can do in Photoshop © to convert an otherwise boring image into an interesting one. Try experimenting with Filters and Radial Blur.
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THE CONTINUOUS SHOOTING MODE:
I normally shoot with the RAW – JPEG in the Quality setting all the time. However, when shooting sports and I need to use the Continuous shooting mode, I prefer JPEG because it allows more images in its memory cache than RAW does.
Most professional photographers, when covering sports events, choose the Continuous shooting mode. With my Canon EOS 70D, when I set it up for High Speed Continuous shooting, I can get 7 frames per second! Below are some examples of images captured in this shooting mode.
I normally shoot with the RAW – JPEG in the Quality setting all the time. However, when shooting sports and I need to use the Continuous shooting mode, I prefer JPEG because it allows more images in its memory cache than RAW does.
Most professional photographers, when covering sports events, choose the Continuous shooting mode. With my Canon EOS 70D, when I set it up for High Speed Continuous shooting, I can get 7 frames per second! Below are some examples of images captured in this shooting mode.
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The image below was an award winning photograph in 2007 from the International Society of Photographers in which
I used the four images captured in sequence and combined them into one using Photoshop.
I used the four images captured in sequence and combined them into one using Photoshop.
Keep in mind that when you choose this shooting mode, you should also choose the AI (artificial intelligence) Servo AF (auto focus) which will focus continuously by tracking and focusing the subject covered by the area in the AF frame as it moves.
Those fantastic shots that you admire in the newspaper and sports magazines are, in most the cases, a “selection” made by the photographer or magazine editor from the sequence of photographs taken from a continuous series. It is the one that depicts the precise moment that shows the right angle, the right expression, the right lighting, for the sharpest image.
The 1½ minute YouTube shown here shows many images that are selections from a series of photographed that I shot in Continuous mode at one time or another.
Those fantastic shots that you admire in the newspaper and sports magazines are, in most the cases, a “selection” made by the photographer or magazine editor from the sequence of photographs taken from a continuous series. It is the one that depicts the precise moment that shows the right angle, the right expression, the right lighting, for the sharpest image.
The 1½ minute YouTube shown here shows many images that are selections from a series of photographed that I shot in Continuous mode at one time or another.
Scott Kelby, famous prolific author and outstanding sports photographer, pointed out in a recent sports YouTube that I saw that when submitting images for publication, Emotion is one that sports editors are always looking for. I have below two opposite emotions: Euphoria and Anger. Can you tell which is which?
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