The secrets to great sports photographs

Whether you photograph sports or not, I find it useful to step back from my usual subjects and look at other styles of photography. You never know what ideas you might get!

Shooting great sports photographs requires quick reflexes, technical know-how, and the ability to anticipate the action. In this podcast, I’ll talk through the secrets to capturing compelling sports images:

1. Know the Sport
2. Use the Right Gear
3. Optimize Camera Settings
4. Pay Attention to Composition
5. Find the Best Angle
6. Capture the Peak Moment
7. Work with Available Light
8. Tell a Story
9. Be Prepared
10. Respect the Game and Athletes
11. Experiment with Creative Shots
12. Edit Thoughtfully

Bonus Tips:

1. Practice: Sports photography requires quick thinking and practice to master timing and technique.
2. Shoot in RAW: Capture more detail and have greater flexibility in post-processing.
3. Stay Safe: Be aware of fast-moving players, balls, or equipment.

I hope you enjoy it.

Best wishes

Graham 

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Transcript

>> Graham: 0:17

Hello again and welcome to the second of this series of I guess they're deep dives or perhaps a little bit more than shallow dives into specific types of photography. And in this one we're going to be looking at sports photography. And I've chosen this for a couple of reasons. One is that even though you might not be, particularly into sports photography, if you have a family and you have children and they're playing sports, then it might be good to photograph some, playing sports, obviously, within the constraints of photographing children and all those rules which obviously need to be respected. Or it might be that you, follow a particular sport, the adult game and you just, just want to get some good photographs of it from time to time. So that's one aspect, just the photograph in the sport itself. The second aspect is that it can be a really good training for other types of photography. And here I'm thinking wildlife seening as that's primarily what I do. But there are a lot of similarities between photographing sports and photographing wildlife. So I shall dive into those. And I'll mention it now because if some of the things I talk about don't make much sense to you, if I had start getting a little bit technical, and I generally don't, but I'm not going to rule it out. I, do know, a really good, training course. It's an online course, you can do it at your own speed and of course it's on my website. So, please go and have a look at that if you would, like to learn more. And that assumes no knowledge at all. And you can work through all of it or the bits that you're interested in, completely up to you. But if anything that I'm speaking about is not making sense, that is the place to look. And if you listen to the last podcast where I introduced this series and I spoke about travel photography, one of the reasons for looking at these different disciplines is that it can, when you step into another discipline of photography, it can make you kind of look at what you're doing day to day with new eyes. So you kind of step back and you can often have a new perspective. At least that's been my experience. So when it comes to sport photography, mean it does depend what sport you're photographing. I photographed, motor racing is one that I like to do. I also love rugby union, so I'll go along to those games. However, the requirements for that are a little bit different. If things are Happening fast to where it might be bold or something, or darts, I don't know. So I don't know what sports you're into, but bear that sport in mind. I'm thinking more about outside type sports and where things are likely to be happening a bit faster and also where you perhaps can't get very close to the participants. All of which incidentally is very reminiscent of a lot of wildlife photography. But there you go. So, what do you need to think about? Well, the first thing to understand is to really know the sport. And the reasons for that are that you can basically see what's going on. I mean, that's fundamentally if you understand the sport, you know what the rules are, you know what's going on and you can anticipate, what's happening. You can. For example, if it's soccer, I mean, soccer is s. Popular. So somebody's, belting down the wing with the ball and it looks they've got somebody else running into the middle, then the chance are they going to cross it in and there's a chance of, the guy running down the middle having to go getting it in the back of the net. So you can see what's going on. So you can read the play, as it were, but you can see what the behavior is. dropping into wildlife speed. But it's that kind of thing. You can anticipate what's going on. So what are your opportunities there? Well, you can certainly photograph that action, but there's a good chance that there is going to be, a chance, an attack on goal, let's say, and therefore you can be all primed and ready to photograph that however it turns out. So understanding the game is important. It is also important because you know where you've got to be. Do you need to be running up and down or is there a certain point where you're going to get the best shot? So as an example, exce me. I went to, a Formula one event in Melbourne a few years ago now and, I wanted to get photographs of the cars. But obviously if you think of the straights, these things are hammering down there. I don. Know how fast go 1 or 200ks now. I don't know, but pretty fast anyway, so the place I decided to park myself was opposite the exit from the pit lane. And there are a couple of reasons for that. the primary one was as they leave the pit lane, although they're still going fairly fast, there is a speed limit in the pit lane. I think these Days. I think that was true back then, but it means that they're not going anywhere near as fast as the cars that are sort of barrelling down, the finishing straight. So because they're going slower, I've got a fighting chance of panning with them and taking photographs and what I was aiming to get. So this is another point about this. Have some thoughts about the kind of shots you want to get. and I've spoken before about starting with the end in mind. And that also applies to how you're going to use them, whether it's social media, a book, stick them on a wall, whatever it might be. the picture I particularly wanted to get was the car moving. So the car itself and the driver pin sharp, but the background all blurred and even the wheels being blurred where they're rotating. So the reason I say that is that if you think about the kind of shot you want to get, and obviously it depends on the sport, but there's a fair chance it's going to define where you need to position yourself and also the kind of lens you'll need and what sort of setup you're going to need. So, obviously I'm going to dive into this in a bit more detail, but that is really important. So it's really important to research. Now, you may know the sport really well or it might be you've been asked to go along. You know the deal. A friend sees you with a nice camera and they assume you're, a photographer who can, tackle any, event and come out with amazing photographs. Hopefully you are there anyway. But if not, here are some tips for you. So if you're not familiar with the sport, do a bit of research, maybe watch some videos. There's bound to be stuff online somewhere just to get some ideas about how the action tends to, unfold and the kind of photographs that you're likely to want to get. So that's the first thing. Now, the second thing, and probably the big one here, and it's certainly a big one for wildlife, and that's simply using the right gear. So in terms of the body, first of all, there's a very good chance you are going to need a camera that has quite a high burst speed. Now, in the good old days of film, three frames per second was considered pretty damn snappy when I was starting. But, these days it's a lot more than that. how much you actually need in practice probably depends on what your photographing. If it's, let's say, it's soccer players. Again, as much as you might want to blast away at seven frames a second or 12 frames a second, people can only move so fast. So at that kind of speed you're going to get relatively small movement between frames. Now if they just hit the ball as hard as they can towards the goal and you're focused on the ball, then absolutely having a very high burst speed, there's a good chance you're going to get something really good. And of course having a big high burst speed as well means you're going have multiple frames to choose from when it comes to picking out that shot. So it is a case of them or the merrier. But also don't get to carried away with how many frames you need per second. Obviously in the other example I gave the motor racting card. Now that was with a film camera when I was shooting that and that was at three frames per second and I'm pivoting. So that didn't give me a huge number of frames compared to what I would shoot today with a digital camera. but nonetheless if you're practicing a lot, you start to get pretty good at synchronizing a following with whatever it is that's moving at a slower shutter speed. I'll talk about those in a moment. if it is a ball sport the chances are you want to be focused on the ball unless you want to get players reactions, that kind of thing. Obviously that's different. But definitely having that option to do very high burst speeds is absolutely benefit I would say. So that's the first thing. second thing on the lense is you most likely going to be wanting to use a telephoto lens depending on how far away you are. And again if you're at the side of a pitch you can be a reasonable distance away if what's going on is either the opposite side of the field or another at the other end. So the chance are you're going to be running up and down to goal lines probably, or you might just pick one goal line and sit there. But I would suggest now again this will come down to what you have available. But my go to lens for wildlife is 100 to 400 and there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that it gives me quite a good amount of zoom. So I've got a four time zoom on the optical zoom and the camera that I mostly use has quite a big RAW file size at maximum file size. So in addition to the optical zoom. With that big file size, it gives me the option of using digital zoom, which in other words, I can crop into a smaller area of the frame and still have a good resolution on that image. So that's what I mean by digital zoom. So use a lens that gives you a good optical zoom range. the other thing is that the field of view will vary. So at 100 mil, I've got a much wider field of view than I do at 400. You might think about using a doubler. so if you don't know, a doubler is a little, adapter that sits between the lens and the camera body and it multiplies. It's actually multiplied because some of them double, but some 1.4 times your focal length. if you use one of those, the only thing I would say was practice with it to make sure it's still usable. That's set up because in my experience that setup can become fairly quickly unusable. As in any, the slightest movement is amplified and you're off your subject, you might lose a stop in your lighting. So be aware of that and just make sure all the other camera functions operate with that multiplier in place. So that's one option if you've got a shorter lens, but you want to get a similar performance to a lens with a much longer focal length. If you look at professional sports events, typically, the people there are using 600, 800 mil, and they're on a tripod. And that's fine for them because they've probably been allocators spot anyway, so they can't go anywhere. And then they just practice and use that to get in these reallyight, tightly framed shots of players. So look at what you've got. Think about what your options are. Think about whether or not you can move or not. And my recommendation always is to shoot in RAW and use the biggest file that your camera will support because that gives you the maximum digital zoom when it comes to processing. So that's one aspect of the lens. The second is to have the fastest possible lens as well. Which is another thing you'll see, when you look at professional photographers at these big sporting events, they have really big lenses and not only in the focal length, but also the diameter of the lens, which means they can get down to really, impressive apertures, maybe, F1s, that sort of thing. So that means that they can. So if you don't know what a fast lens is, it's basically a lens with a wider aperture, which means it will allow more light in, which means you can shoot at a higher shutter speed in a given lighting situation at the same ISO than you could with a, different lens. So they're really good for sports. And that's simply because most of the time, unless you are shooting a bowls tournament or something, you probably do want a pretty high shutter speed. So what kind of shutter speed do you want? Well, just as a rough rule of thumb, the guide I normally give people is if you're talking in thousandths of a second, you are probably freezing everything. So if you want, say, that soccer game and somebody's just kick the ball and you want everything frozen, then you're probably going to be shooting 1 2,000ths of a second, something like that. However, something to bear in mind is that if you do shoot like that and you freeze everything, you might kind of lose some of the energy of the game. And this is why when I was shooting, doing my Formula one stuff, I was tending to shoot at a shutter speed of 1 125th of a second. So when you start getting into hundreds of a second, the chances are you've got some movement to some blurring of an extremity or a vehicle or a background within that shot. Exactly how much blurring will depend on how fast the subject is going, maybe you're moving to and what shutter speed you're choosing. In my opinion, it's better to have a bit of blurring because that, that introduces some motion. Some people don't like it those. So it comes back to whatever floats your boat. But I'd like to shoot at that lower speed because as I've said with the motor racing shot, if I got my panning right and I was right on the car. So the car was pin sharp, the driver was pin sharp. I had the background was all blurred and the wheels of the vehicle were blurred as well because they're rotating. So I like that shot because there's a lot of movement in there. I can clearly see who the driver is, but it'there's movement. And technically I find that harder shot to get because you've got to be absolutely bang on your subject to get them sharp. equally, I used to photograph air shows quite a lot and propeller driven aircraft. And what I would find was that people, a lot of people go along there and just shoot in thousands of a second. So they'd absolutely freeze the propellers. So you've got a static propeller in this thing in the air and it just Looked to me like a model aircraft. I could have just hung something from my ceiling and taken a photograph of it. So I think there's something to be said for considering shooting at relatively slower, shutter speed so that you start to introduce some movement and how you work that depends on what you're photographing. And you're going to have to obviously work with that and maybe practice and give that some thought about the results that you want. Or even just Google, look at images online, look at photographs you really like, and look at, what kind of shutter speed the photographer was using to get that particular result. So that is, definitely one thing to think about. You could even go really slow just to do something kind of wacky out there and, just something very different and, see what sort of result you get. So again, the rules are yours to bend and with what you'd like. But, I do suggest being creative, because, look, I think it's fun. That's part of the photography for me. It's to be creative and try different things. Now the other thing about, the lens is the aperture you're using and why that's important. Obviously it has a bearing on the shutter speed that you can use, but more importantly, in my opinion, is what's happening to the background. So this also comes back to composition. And what are you doing with the photograph? Are you filling the frame with a particular player, whether it's, portrait or landscape format, you getting right tight crop into their face? Are you getting their body as they're kicking a ball or doing whatever they're doing? what's the shot you're going for? Or are you doing a wider shot so that there's a lot of movement in there of players going one way and another as the balls in play? in doing that, where are you taking the viewer's I. So are you using rule of thirds as a basic construction method? So you've got space there, so it might be space for the ball to go into, or you might be using that more open area of the frame, so the open area away from your subject to have the ball in it. If the subject is the player, you might have other players as part of that space. Something's going either there, maybe coming in to tackle or whatever it might be. So have a think about how you're using the frame. And of course, when it comes to aperture, what do you want to be in focus? So again, do you want the background? So this could be, the spectators, do you want them in Sharp focus? I would suggest probably not, but I don't know. I don't know what your aims are, but for me, I like the background out of focus so that you've got some context. Anybody looking at the photograph can see this game is played in a stadium and there are people there, albeit blurry, but where their eye is drawn is to the players or the ball or wherever it is I want their eye to be drawn. So have a think about the composition and that will determine what depth of field you need to set up. And then obviously you've got your shutter speed, which will, and your lining conditions. And then you know what ISO you need to set. So you need to really be across all of this stuff. Again, I say it quite often, so apologies if you've heard me say it before, but if you don't understand the exposure triangle, you are going to struggle to come up with really creative photographs. So it is really, really important that you understand that relationship. You don't need to remember all the numbers that will come in time, but do understand how the different elements of the exposure triangle interact with one another and then finally focusing. So the chances are, I don't know what you're using, but there's a chance that you've got some sort of autofocus. So what is the mode? Do you understand, first of all, what autofocus modes you have on your camera? What's available, and it might be on the camera, it might be on the lenses, or it might be a combination of the two. With those autofoc modes, do you know how they work and which one is most appropriate for what you're going to shoot? Because that is actually quite important. And then with a lot of, the more modern cameras, so you may, may not have this, but they have some pretty cool, tracking, capability. And what I mean by that is, once you've told it what you want to focus on, as that subject moves towards the camera, away from the camera, the camera lens setup will adjust and keep that subject in focus. So it is designed usually for use with people, but not exclusively. But if you've got that kind of focusing capability, that can save you a lot of work. So I would recommend you just make sure you know what you've got and if you do have something like that, practice with it. And obviously that's a given. With all of the things I've spoken about, practice, practice, practice, until you're not even really thinking about, consciously thinking about what you're doing, you're just doing it because you can't, you know, go to a soccer game, say, and somebody who scores a cracking goal but you were fiddling around with the menus on your camera. You can't really call out and ask. They could just do that again because you weren't ready're not going to go down terribly well and you're not going to come back with too many great results. So really practice and really get to know your camera. This is absolutely fundamental stuff. So I've spoken about where you are in relation to the action and are you going to be running about? Are you going to be in M1 spot? But even if you're stuck in one spot, have a think about what kind of angles you can shoot. So most people again will tend to shoot from head height, just their normal standing position. Some might crouch down, but maybe you can get some really cool stuff by putting the camera on the ground. As long as it's not going to do any damage to the camera. It may be that in those kind of situations, and this could be, maybe before the game starts or a kick off or if plays been interrupted for some reason, you could maybe just do a quick wide angle shot from just plonking the camera down on the ground or very close to the ground and just doing a wide angle with lots of stuff in focus. It's unusual. It might be interesting. Ah, again, coming back to storytelling, if you're doing the visual storyteller thing or if you're thinking of doing this as a part of a photo book, maybe a collection of sports images, well, the greater variety of angles and perspectives that you have, the better, because it gives you a lot more to choose from and you'll find things that are a bit more unusual. And I think most people looking at photographs, I always appreciate seeing photographs that are different. Whether photographers had a shooting in a way that most people don't, that for me makes it stand out. So again, how does that work for you, when it comes to getting a good angle. Another one is if you're able to, is to get behind the goal. If it's again soccer or a game like I think hockey, things like that, where you have a net, you can shoot through the net, that can give you a more interesting perspective. If you've got the goalkeeper there as well in the picture, it'just it's a different perspective. And even if it's not a brilliant picture as a standalone, it might work well in a series, in a sequence of photographs to tell the story of that particular event. Obviously, the shots that stand out are the key events. So it might be a goal or a try or conversion. thinking of Johnny Wilkinson in the, 2003 World Cup Final in Sydney. But'if you're American, don't worry if you're Australian, I'm sorry. but the thing is, key moments like that, and in fact, joking aside with that, particular event, there are some brilliant wide shots of that happening. And so sometimes the actual event, the score happening or whatever it is, you don't have to be really zoomed in tightly. You can actually get away sometimes use a wide shot, but it captures everything. So be creative, be open to, different perspectives to what you perhaps would initially go with. once someone has scored, what are the reactions so you could do? There's an opportunity to get some great, maybe kind of more portrait, more close up E type shots. If you've got the lens, of the player's reaction, maybe the opposition players with disappointment, maybe the goalkeeper, if there's a goalkeeper involved. So this is all part of the human story of the sport. So one aspect of sports photography is capturing the events and perhaps allowing people to see what's going on in a way that they wouldn't experience if they were watching it. So this is perhaps freezing a moment or building in that, blurring, that kind of thing. But equally another part of the story is the human reaction. So getting in reactions from players, get in reaction from the crowd. so there's lots and lots of possibilities, when you're in that sort of situation. The key thing about all of this is timing and being ready at any moment, to grab that shot. So it does mean that you need to be on top of your camera settings. So if the light's changing, for example, whether it's coming late in the day and lighting'going down, or maybe it's been raining and then it brightens up again, all this sort of thing. Just make sure that your camera is probably set up all the time in post. You can recover to a certain degree. You've got if your exposure'off but ideally you want to be shooting correctly exposed images in the first place because then when it comes to post you've got a lot more options. So make sure you're always ready to go with the camera and make sure that you're completely watching the action. Don't get distracted. look, it's been a classic for me with photographing things like whles. I'll just, in a Weak moment. I'll chat to somebody on a boat and the next thing I know I've got a double breach happening behind me, out of nowhere. So things can happen pretty much out of nowhere. So always be ready to go. speaking about light, obviously, you need to make sure that you're set up to use the light that's available. So as I've said, it might be changing. You might be working in floodlights if you're at that sort of an event. if you're in a, maybe a night game where the lighting isn't so great, then the chances are you're going to have to compensate with a higher ISO, which means you're likely to get grainier pictures or more noise in the image. another secondary camera you can always use is your smartphone, because my experience with smartphones, for wide shots at least, and video, is that they often, it depends what camera you're using, but often they'll perform better than a DSLR or, well, definitely a dslr, because of the technology they use. So always remember that the chances are you're carrying a second photograph with you and that can be great for just, wide shots. Panoramas. I use my camera, my smartphone, for panoramas because I find that's quite a nice feature. I don't always use the images, but it's a good thing to have there. And this, again, is something that you could shoot, before the start of the game or at half time or when people are deciding which end they're going to shoot from all these kinds of things. So it's just another camera option you have, at particular times during the game. So I've spoken, a lot about telling the story in terms of the people. Another thing to think about, details. So it might be, just details of kit, it might be the shirt, the badge on the shirt, it might be boots. There might be some more abstract pictures that you can throw in, perhaps either before or after the game, or, you know, maybe someone's throwing a water bottle down next to some boots or whatever. So have a look around. there are likely to be other kind of incidental photographs. And again, the nice thing about these is that they'll set a certain tone to the series of photographs you've got and you may well be sharing images that other people haven't thought about taking. So again, it makes your photographs more unique, your story and your storytelling more unique and probably a lot more interesting. So remember the details, just look for details when you're at the event, it might be before the game, it might be before you're evening position. you know, there are lots and lots of things going on. It could be somebody wearing a scarf, you know, who knows, lots and lots of things. But be open to those kinds of possibilities. Always be ready, obviously. So make sure your battery is fully charged. memory cards are ready to go. I always wipe mine before a shoot so that the cards in the camera are what I use for acquisition. I never do long term storage on them. As soon as I finish the shoot I put everything onto a PC and then from PC it goes on to backup hard drives. So I use three at home. And if I'm traveling I've got a couple of SSD cards. They're both 1 TB, so they're very small, very light. They are relatively expensive compared to external ruggedized hard drives which I'd recommend as an option as an alternative. but the thing about the solid states is that there's nothing to move from. They are solid state, there's no moving parts. So they're very reliable. they're very light, they're very small. So they're really easy to just stick in my pocket if I'm traveling. So that way minimize the chances of losing my images. But when it comes to the memory cards and the camera, I always keep them clear at the beginning of the shoot. I to have I initialize them. Think that's right. The terms go out of my head. but that way I've got maximum storage at the beginning of the game because again I'm shooting raw maximum files. So and I've got two cards in my camera. So again I don't know what you've got in your camera. You might have a single SD card, you might have a single flash drive. The Canons I use, I've got a Canon NEOS 5ds as my primary camera body and I use a NEOS 7D Mark II as my secondary. Both them take two cards. And the other reason, the five is a full frame. The two is a cropped sensor, the seven is a, a cropped sensor. but the advantage of these using those two is that they drive. They're almost identical in the way that they operate. So I can pick up one or the other and I don't have to think about which camera I'm using. I guess, or another thing anyway to think about with sport is just respect the players and the officials and what's going on, Be there, but be observing what's going on. Don't be a part of it. And I kind of jokingly said if you're not ready, you can't really ask them to just do that again, please. But yeah, respect where you are. And I think that's true of any photography in my opinion. you're there to photograph what's going on. Ideally you want to be photographing the reality of that situation and you can't really do that if you stick yourself front and center. So you need to be out of the way, just capturing everything quietly and then hopefully you've got a brilliant set of, photographs. just on the creative side, I guess it's worth, coming back to. Now I've mentioned panning, so that was what I was doing when I was photographing, Formula one cars. So again, I don't know what you're photographing, but it may be panning is something that you need to think about. If you are using a tripod that can be, well, relatively easy, I guess. if you just pan off a tripod, if you've got the right tripod head, of course, that allows you to pan. if you are hand holding, which is how I normally do my photography, then it's really good just to practice that as much as possible. And a good way to practice a practice is to find a road with cars on it and just follow cars. I don't mean running along behind them, I mean, get them in the viewfinder, and just pan with them and try taking photographs and keeping the car nice and sharp, but blow in the background. So yeah, you can't be practice. And if it's not a technique that you're very familiar with, practicing something, panning with a subject, then I really do recommend you find somewhere safe to practice and get as much practice in as you can until you get competent. So it is very much one of those things where practice makes perfect. Just other thoughts on the creativity side is to think about silhouettes. So I've spoken about maybe taking a photograph from behind the goal, maybe with the goalkeeper there. But you could do that, particularly if it's floodlit or the sun. You're shooting into the sun. You could get some quite cool shots just using shadows and playing around with that and it's silhouettes, so know, look again, look at what's available, look at what you can do in quite periods. Just quickly grab a. If you've got Two cameras, it's helpful. so one of them could be a wide angle, say the other one your telephoto. But you can always use your smartphone of course, as a secondary camera and in a quite a moment just quickly grab a candid silhouette and that again is something that just adds to that story. reflections are another one. So depending upon where you are, there may or may not be m many opportunities to use reflections. But if there are, always use them, make use them and see what you can do with them. don't forget puddles and things like that. So if you are at a sporting event where it's a stadium or a smaller stadium, you may well find if it's been raining, that you can use a puddle or if it hasn't been raining and you've got a water bottle, you can always make your own puddles and then use a reflect there. So get creative. So I think there's a lot of scope to be creative with sports photography above and beyond just photographing what's going on. the final thing, I guess the final thing just to say and to recap are to do your research. If you don't know the sport, or don't know the venue, then do your research. Practice as much as you can before the event so that you are, pretty familiar with the techniques you're going to use. be creative, be very aware, be very open to different types of photograph. always shoots in raw biggest file that you can. And finally, just stay safe, keep yourself safe and beware of other people. So I hope you found that, useful. Maybe some food for thought. Even if you're not planning on doing sports photography, there might be some thoughts in there, some suggestions that you hadn't thought about before. And on that note, I shall, leave it for now and I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now. Well, thank you for listening and just before I go, I wanted to let you know that I'm running my first live webinar for almost a year and that's happening on the 26th of February. So it's happening in the evening, French time, but it will be recorded. So if you can't make the live, webinar, you can definitely, register and listen to the recording. You can also send me questions if you're not going to make the live event. So all the details are on my website and you'll also find the event listed on Eventbrite. So please take a look and, I'll be really talking about how to think like a wildlife photographer. But of course, that planning and the approach is pretty much the same for quite, a few other types of photography. So thanks for listening and hope to see you or hear from you on the 26th. Bye for now.