Sports Photography

Introduction

Sports photography is one of the very few remaining

pure forms of documentary photography. The moment
happens in fraction of a second, and it’s gone! One
either captures it in an image or one couldn’t. Unlike
sports writers and television, still photographer have to
capture the moment live and while it’s happening, they
don’t have the privilege of any instant replay with
them.
Sports photography not only captures the remarkable
skills and abilities of the athletes, in fact it also intends
to capture the emotions and passions of those involved
in the game.
Spots Photography is also treated as sports journalism;
in fact there are two kinds of sports photography which
are popular, namely

Vernacular Photography:

Photographs taken of people paying with each other in

general is simply known as vernacular photography, its
equitant to amateur photography, where people click
pictures of anybody or everybody playing any game of
sorts.
Sports Journalism:
Photographs of state, national or international
tournaments, e.g. Olympics, Common wealth Games
etc is termed as Sports photography. These events are
mostly covered in newspapers.
The main purpose of professional sports photography is
for editorial purposes; dedicated sports photographers
usually work for newspapers, major wire agencies or
dedicated sports magazines.
However, sports photography is also used for
advertising purposes both to build a brand and as well
as to promote a sport in a way that cannot be
accomplished by editorial means.

What does it take to become a sports

photographer?
Qualities to become a sports photographer are:
Sports Photography is a great genre for those who love
both sports and photography, but a few things have to
be understood before one thinks about starting with
this career, which are:

1. Talent: Natural talent for photography comes to

a person since his birth, one either possesses
talent or doesn’t.

2. Skill- Skill could be developed, also as one gets

more and more experienced clicking sports he is
able to capture the right movements, and hence,
skill sets increase and improves over a period of
time.
 3. Knowledge- One should have some basic
knowledge of both, that is, photography and
sports. One must know how the camera works
inside and outside. It is important that a camera
person should technically understand the
working of his equipment in order to control its
functions and derive best results from the
machine.

4. Practice to sharpen the skill- One may learn

the working of the equipment and operating the
same, but till the time, the craft is not put to
practice a sports photographer can’t be perfect.
Skills improve dramatically with practice and
atrophy with disuse.

5.Desire/liking for the profession- One’s

philosophy and attitude towards his profession
immensely affects his work.

6.Learn to en-cash opportunity on getting

best shots: sports photography being a candid
and extempore field one needs to be quick with
not only clicking picture rather capturing the
right moment and emotion, remember if it’s
gone once, it’s gone forever.
Equipment for Sports photography

Equipment used for sports photography is a Digital

Single Lens Reflex camera (DSLR), with high shutter
speeds. Interchangeable lenses that have 50mm and
can be zoomed or changed to 300mm zoom, depending
on the type of sport.
Lenses are very important, to reach closer or farther as
fast as possibly to stay with the game play. A monopod
or tripod for stability and extra batteries are essential.

Camera bodies
Preferred camera bodies for the modern sport
photographer are those with fast auto-focusing ability
and a high frame rate (usually 8 frames per second or
faster).

Spare Camera

Since the photographer has to take several different

shots during sports photography it becomes very
different to change lenses really fast, therefore its
advisable to carry an extra camera.
This helps in two ways, one, the photographer gets a
different perspective for the pictures every time due to
using a different camera, second, there is no fear of
battery exhaustion considering a spare camera is
always handy.

Tripod

Due to the sturdy and stable nature of tripod, it

becomes easier for any photographer to take
photographs without witnessing jerks or shaky
movement, this is both very useful, there is no problem
in using camera for either longer duration or for shots
which require a minimum height and great stability.

Spare Battery

Spare Batteries are extremely useful when one knows

that the shoot will take long ,especially also because
one cannot take a risk with technology, therefore it is
advisable to always carry an extra battery, especially
whenever two cameras are used and that too for a
shoot that is important and will take some time.

Spare memory card

Photographer doesn’t know how many pictures would

be taken, therefore the number of picture might exceed
than the expectation, another days there are blunders
and images could get distorted.
Therefore in order to avoid such blunders and goof ups,
it’s always advisable to carry a spare memory card and
that too, at least (8 GB) in order to take as many
options as one wants.

Lenses

Different sports favor different lenses, but sports

photography usually requires fast (wide
aperture) telephoto lenses, with
fast autofocus performance.

Fast autofocus is needed to focus on movement,

telephoto to get close to the action, and wide aperture
serves several purposes:

 The background is put drastically out of focus,

resulting in better subject isolation.
 The lenses can focus more quickly due to the
increase in light entering the lens – important with
fast-moving action.
 Faster shutter speeds can be used to freeze the
action.
However, extremely wide apertures (such as f/1.2 or
f/1.4) are more rarely used, because at these
apertures the depth of field is quite low, which makes
focusing more difficult and slows down autofocus.

The main distinction is between outdoor sports

and indoor sports –

In outdoor sports the distances are greater and the

light brighter, while in indoor sports the distances are
lesser and the light dimmer.
Accordingly, outdoor sports tend to have longer focal
length long focus lenses with slower apertures,

Indoor sports: In contrast to the outdoor sports

indoor sports tend to have shorter long lens lenses with
faster apertures.

Both zoom and prime lenses are used; zoom –

generally in the
70–200,
75–300, or
100–400 range
Allow a greater range of framing, while primes are
faster, cheaper, lighter, and optically superior, while
being more restricted in framing.
Apertures of the capacity of, f/2.8 or faster are most
often used, though f/4 is also found, particularly on
brighter days. Particularly visible are the telephoto
lenses, whose distinctive white casing (to dissipate the
sun's heat) is recognizable at many sporting events.
This varies with sport and preference; for
example golf photographers may prefer to use a
500mm f/4 as opposed to a 400mm f/2.8 as it is a
lighter lens to be carried around all day.

Technique used for sports photography:

Location is often important for sports photography. At

big events, professional photographers often shoot
from VIP spots with the best views, usually as close to
the action as possible.
Most sports require the photographer to frame their
images with speed and adjust camera settings
spontaneously to prevent blurring or incorrect
exposure. Some sports photography is also done from
a distance to give the game a unique effect.
Shutter speed is critical to catching motion, thus sports
photography is often done in shutter priority mode or
manual. ISO speed is often high (to allow faster shutter
speeds) and may be left in auto.
Photos are often taken in burst mode to capture the
best moment, sometimes in combination with JPEG
rather than RAW shooting (JPEG files being smaller,
these allow longer bursts).
Use of Light in sports photography

Light is a form of radiant energy that we can see with

our eyes, and record with a camera. It’s our primary
method of obtaining information about the world.
Light in terms of quantity, quality and colour, is also
the most important element of photography which
affects the technical quality of our sports pictures.
Unfortunately in many cases for sports action
photography, there is not much we can do about any of
these factors.
We usually just have to work with what is there. In
some cases we may be able to set up strobes to
provide our own main source of light, or use a strobe
as fill to supplement existing light

Quantity:

The amount of light illuminating our sports event plays

a critical role in our ability to use a high shutter speed
to freeze the action.
At one extreme, we can have an abundance of direct
sunshine and plenty of light. At the other hand, we
might have only a little light from a few dim bulbs in a
school gymnasium.
Quality:
Quality basically describes the light’s nature in terms of
direction, softness or hardness. A simple example of
hard light is that of a direct flash or noon sunshine ,
where the stark light makes harsh shadows in
comparison , soft light could be possible as of an effect
of an overcast cloudy day .

Color:
Colors play a major role in any photography for the
matter, and colors are also responsible for adding
mood and substance to photography. In order to
understand various facets of sports photography, we
shall start with understanding the various types of
natural colors which can also be created by humans for
certain photography assignments.
Although our eyes are every good at adapting the light
sources of many different colors, our cameras are more
objective and will record colors accurately for the most
part.
Late afternoon or early morning light is beautiful
yellow-red color, similarly light form the sky in open
shade or on a clear day can be very blue in color, and
indoors different light bulb types produce different
colors.
Tungsten bulbs produce red-yellow light, and some
fluorescents can produce green. Different color light
sources can produce different colors in our images and
this is why it is important to set the color balance
correctly in a digital camera.
Adjusting the Exposure
Exposure is referred to as the, amount of light that hits
the sensor in our camera and creates image. In most
cases, there is only one exposure that is correct.
The amount of exposure must be adjusted to match
the sensitivity of the sensor.
Photographers mention exposure as “STOPS”. A STOP
is simply when , the amount of light changes by a
factor of 2 if the exposure changes by a stop , then it
either double or is cut into half that reaches the
sensors in our cameras and determines the correct
exposure, that is, the shutter speed and the F/stop.
The camera’s ISO setting can also be adjusted to give
further control over the exposure to the photographer.

ISO:
ISO stands for “International Standards Organization”
and in photography; ISO is a term that refers to the
sensitivity of a sensor as defined by its organization.
ISO can be thought of as the relative sensitivity of the
camera sensor to light. A camera with a higher base
ISO would be more sensitive to light. Technically, the
ISO standard only refers to the base sensitivity.
Sensors really have only one level of sensitivity. Sensor
output however can be adjusted to give the effect of
adjustable ISO sensitivities.
This is a complicated subject that is beyond the scope
of this article, but you can cheat and think of changing
the ISO by changing the sensitivity of your camera’s
sensor.

ISO Range:
ISO setting generally run from about ISO 50-100 to
ISO 1,600, to 3,200 or even to an extent of 6,400 to
the upper limit. Every time an ISO doubles, that is the
equivalent of one stop in F/stops or shutter speeds.
Higher numbers allow the use of shorter shutter
speeds, although there is a heavy price to be paid, and
that is higher noise in the image.
Ideally we want to use the lowest ISO that gives us the
highest shutter speed that will stop the action.
In situations with plenty of light , the F/Stop can also
be adjusted to provide correct exposure. In situations
with little light, the lenses are used.
When it comes to using widest aperture (lowest F/stop
numbers such as f/2.8) and the ISO is adjusted to
provide a shutter speed high enough to freeze the
action.
Location
Placement of oneself along with the equipment
also at times dictates the quality of photograph
to be clicked. Therefore for a photographer,
location of the sport, his own location in the
venue and his equipment setup at the location
has to be done very meticulously and perfectly.

A photographer can only photograph things he

can see. The closer you are to someone, the
better you can see them. Sports are no
different. One has to get as close to what you
are shooting as he can.
Typically, for a photographer with a press pass,
is permitted to enter the sidelines or other
similar locations. The photographer is mostly not
given access to the direct playing field which
also depends on the sport, a photographer is
most likely will be limited to designated
locations.
For instance, at most football games, the media
cannot shoot between the two 35 yard markers.
For most people, the situation is even worse.
Photographer probably doesn’t have press
access and are stuck in the stands for your
shots. Therefore the photographer needs to get
as close as possible. Even if one can make it to
the sidelines, you will be jostling for space with
many other photographers, both still and video
 who have worked hard to get there and have the
same job to do that you have.
Photographer also has to be familiar with the
sport to be able to capture the moment. This
means knowing where to position oneself for the
best action. This is critical because of angular
momentum that will be discussed in the section
on freezing action. Not only does it matter with
the subject, but the background.
Look at what is going to be behind the subject.
While we will try to minimize the impact that a
background has, it will still be unavoidable.
Therefore in order to achieve that, the
photographer needs to position himself where
the background is the most pleasing.