6 Ways To Improve Your Sports Photography

Sports photography. If you can master it, you’ll improve every aspect of your shooting. Much of your success will depend on what you do before you release the trigger.

1~ Pay attention to the background

More than anything else, this will take your action pictures to the next level. I can tell if a photographer knows what they’re doing just by looking at where they position themselves to shoot. Any busyness in the background will camouflage the action.

2~ Use fast telephoto lenses wide open

Shooting wide open helps to clean up the background and isolates your subject with shallow depth of field. Sports photographers generally do not use a lens slower than f 2.8.

3~ Keep alert

Expect the unexpected. You never know what’s going to happen at a sporting event. Avoid chimping! (editing your photos in camera)

4~ Practice

Great shots don’t happen all the time. When they do, you not only have to be there to capture it, your camera skill has to be impeccable so you don’t miss it. It takes thousands of hours to build a portfolio.

5~ Try a wide angle

Any chance you get. Most sports pictures are telephoto. They all begin to look the same. Ask any picture editor. Stay low to the ground to clean up the background.

6~ Look for something different.

Quirky is what you want. Strange things happen when you freeze action. When shooting and editing, look for unique images that still show both teams and include the puck or ball.

Ira Glass~ What You’re Making Isn’t So Good,OK?

When starting out, or experiencing a plateau in creative progress. It’s healthy to be unhappy with your work. I worry more about photographers who think their work is awesome.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Studio Lighting Gear~ What To Buy?

There is mucho lighting gear out there. And it’s expensive. It can be overwhelming when you’re starting out. You don’t want to waste money on stuff you don’t really need.
All of my gear is from Paul C Buff out of Nashville. I can’t say enough about this company and their products. You can also buy directly from them out of Australia and Europe.

There is no “right” answer for what you need in the studio. But here’s what I use.

I own two White Lightning X1600 flash units. I only use one at a time. One is for backup.

They are relatively inexpensive, easy to use and bullet-proof. I’ve had one drop with a light stand into concrete from 10 feet high. Didn’t even faze it. The color balance is great and they recycle fast.

One AlienBees™ ABR800 Ringflash Unit

Ringflash is a specialty lighting effect. However this Ringflash doubles as a lightweight remote flash unit for location shoots. And for around 500 bucks, it’s not going to break the bank to get a ringflash. You can get cheaper one’s that attach to a speedlight. But they don’t have the same power. This one is plenty powerful. I’m going to do a shoot with it soon. So I might go into how it works on a future post. It can be tricky to use.

White High Output Beauty Dish

This has become my favorite light modifier. The light IS beautiful! You can’t beat it for crispness in the shadows and nice round catch lights in the eyes. If I had to pick one modifier, this would be it.

Large (32″ x 40″) Softbox

You really have to have one of these. It’s just indispensable for full-length fashion shots. A large Octabox is another good choice. I think I might get one of those soon.

This is what I use and it works for me. It’s fun to experiment, research and find out what lighting gear you want to get. I’m always looking to more lighting toys to the arsenal.

Depending on what you shoot, and what your lighting aesthetics are, you’ll end up with a completely different kit than mine. But I hope this helps.

Psychology-of-Color

We use color to evoke emotion in our photos. Even the choice of black and white will strike an emotional chord in photographs. Try using color to achieve depth of meaning and clarity of vision in your images. This chart is a good start if you are a serious photographer and want to understand how color works.

Breaking Into Photojournalism ~ Lenses, It’s About Extremes

This is the first post I’ll be doing for those of you who want to start a career as a photojournalist.

You never know what extremes in life you’ll be facing day to day as a newspaper photog. One minute you’re photographing a 108 year-old’s birthday and within an hour you’re at a murder scene. It’s the same with the equipment you need to have. You’re going to have to be heavily stacked in the extreme focal lengths.

In order to get close to the action and tell the story in one image, you need an extreme wide-angle lens. You need to have images with impact, and you can’t rely on Photoshop in post. A wide-angle gives you this. The perspective let’s the viewer walk into the frame to feel what it was like to be there.

Canon EOS 7D, EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM~ 1/250 sec,f/5.0, ISO 500.

You’ll be shooting lots of sports and concerts. And in the darkest places imaginable. The average high school gym is as bright as your living room at night. Minimum shutter speed to freeze action is around 1/500 sec. So you’ll need a fast extreme telephoto. Industry standard is a 300mm f2.8.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS USM, 1/1250 sec., f/4.0, 1600 ISO

Another workhorse is the 70-200mm f2.8. You’ll be using it all the time. A great investment. Stay away from the IS (image stabilizaion) version of this lens. You don’t need it and it will save you 500 bucks. Learn to hold still and use the proper stance for shooting with a telephoto. In news your subject is always moving so IS won’t help there either.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III,Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM~ 1/320 sec, f 2.8 ISO 3200

Invest in fast, extreme lenses. And lenses ARE an investment. You can use them for decades. Technology doesn’t advance for lenses like it does with camera bodies.
Try to buy new. If you have to, you can find used lenses. Get the three lenses mentioned here, you’ll be set. Lenses are expensive. But it’s a good test to see who’ll sacrifice life’s spending temptations to get into the biz. No snowboards or motorcycles for you!!!!!