Sports Photography Is Six Different Hobbies

Sports Photography Is Six Different Hobbies

Sports Photography Is Six Different Hobbies

When I started the daily photography challenge back in January, I had no plan for all the different types of photography I was going to try. In fact, I had no idea there were so many different types. In theory, my idea was pretty simple: take at least one photograph every day, learn how to use my camera better, experiment, and hopefully be a noticeably better photographer at the end of the year than I was at the beginning.

Boy, have I learned some lessons over the last several months.

Since the start, I’ve shot a ton of different “styles”: landscapes, cityscapes, wildlife, floral and a bunch of others. Somewhere along the way, sports photography snuck into the mix. Then I went on to photograph basketball, roller derby, soccer, BMX, golf, and most recently football. You can conveniently stick all six under the heading of “sports photography,” but after trying to shoot them, I’m not sure they belong in the same category at all. The camera may be the same, but damn near everything happening in front of it changes by sport.

Every time I start thinking I might have figured out sports photography, I try another sport and discover an entirely new collection of ways to screw it up.

Photography is really good at keeping me humble.

Basketball: My Introduction to Bad Gym Lighting

My first real attempt at basketball photography was my niece’s state girls basketball championship tournament in the Boise area. Naturally, I brought the camera. I figured it would be a great opportunity to try shooting an actual game.

The first day was at the Idaho Center in Nampa. I was ready to shoot.

They were not ready for me to shoot.

I couldn’t bring my detachable camera and lens combination in because I didn’t have a press pass. Lesson number one had absolutely nothing to do with shutter speed, ISO, autofocus, or photography.

Sometimes you need permission.

Okay. Fine.

The second day Meeka’s team played for third place in the consolation game in a gymnasium in East Boise, and this time I could bring the camera in. I still wasn’t allowed on the floor because it was a state sanctioned tournament, but I could bring the setup in and get some shots.

Excellent. Redemption!

Ummmm...no. Try again.

My friend Rob Belnap, an amazing sports photographer, had warned me about gym lighting. Be ready for it to suck.

Well, guess what.

It sucked. A lot!

The lighting was horrible, and I was still learning the camera. I spent the entire game changing settings, trying different things, following the action, and convincing myself that surely some of these photographs were going to work.

I shot more than 3,000 pictures.

Nothing worked.

Zip! Zero! Zilch! Nada!

Not three decent photographs. Not one accidental masterpiece buried somewhere in the middle.

Exactly zero came out well.

That one hurt.

At the time I was frustrated as hell, but looking back, those 3,000 bad photographs taught me a lot. Just because a gym looks bright to my eyes doesn’t mean the camera agrees. The players were moving, so I needed a faster shutter speed. Faster shutter meant less light. ISO went up. Noise went up. Aperture opened. I changed settings again. None of that mattered much if I didn’t understand how all those pieces worked together. Pressing the shutter button 3,000 times certainly didn’t solve the problem either. Volume does not necessarily equal success in photography. Who knew?

Three thousand opportunities for education.

Sometime after that, I got to photograph a few of my granddaughter Gwen’s YMCA youth basketball games.

There I was in another gym with another collection of questionable lights hanging from the ceiling. I’m a glutton for punishment. What can I say?

Here we go again.

The difference was that this time I wasn’t starting from zero. I had 3,000 failed photographs worth of education behind me and I was determined to get a few good ones.

The lighting still sucked, but I understood a little more about what I needed to do. The kids were moving fast-ish, so I needed enough shutter speed to stop them without completely starving the camera for light. I understood the relationship between shutter speed, aperture, and ISO better than I had at Meeka’s tournament, and I thought I was beginning to figure out the autofocus as well, maybe.

Meanwhile, the ten-year-olds continued playing without waiting for me to work any of this crap out.

How rude!

This time, though, I actually came home with a few decent photographs.

They weren’t masterpieces, but after the Meeka experience, seeing usable basketball pictures on the computer felt like progress, which is what I was really after.

Roller Derby: Okay, Let’s Make Everybody Move Faster

After basketball, I had the opportunity to photograph roller derby. At least I walked into this one with some experience adjusting for crappy indoor lighting. Granted, a substantial portion of that experience consisted of knowing several things that didn’t work.

It still counts!

Roller derby was another indoor sport, but the whole feel of it was completely different. Instead of basketball players changing direction up and down a court, I had women on skates moving around a track at high speed, bodies crossing in front of each other, collisions, wild expressions, and a whole bunch of crazy-eyed women coming toward me really fast.

The lighting was also different. I had natural light coming through the high windows behind the bleachers mixed with fluorescent light from the venue. Not great, but after the basketball tournament it felt more forgiving.

The whole experience was awesome.

This was where I first started realizing that sports photography isn’t only about freezing somebody in motion. There are stories happening everywhere. Sometimes the best photograph isn’t the fastest skater on the track.

It might be the expression right before contact, somebody fighting through the pack, the look on a skater’s face, or the reaction immediately after something happens. Sometimes it's the player sitting on the bench for a penalty. Facial expressions can tell a serious story.

I was also getting better at recognizing that if I waited until I saw the moment and then decided to press the shutter, I was already late. I had to start paying attention to what was developing before it happened.

That one would follow me into every sport after it.

Soccer: Oh Look...SUNLIGHT!

My soccer photography came from something a little more personal. A good friend’s daughter was playing her final high school soccer game before heading off to college, and I got the opportunity to photograph it.

This one taught me immediately that I really like shooting outside.

After fighting gym lighting, walking onto a field in late-afternoon sunlight felt like somebody had finally turned the photography difficulty setting down a notch.

Thank you!

Of course, soccer found another way to make things difficult.

There is a lot of field.

A LOT. Like...a whole soccer field.

Basketball and roller derby keep everything in a relatively contained area. Soccer players apparently believe every square foot of available real estate should be used. The action can be right in front of me one second and approximately seventeen miles away the next.

Okay, maybe not seventeen miles, but it feels like it through the camera.

This was the sport that really made me pay attention to where the game was going instead of where it currently was. Which player is moving into open space? Where is the ball probably going next? Is the play coming toward me or heading the other direction? Where is everyone in relation to the goal?

The late-afternoon light gave me some great opportunities, but knowing a little about what was happening on the field became just as important. The better I could predict where the play was headed, the better chance I had of already having the camera pointed there.

Again, sounds obvious after you figure it out. My grasp of the obvious baffles me some days.

BMX: Finally, the Light and I Are on the Same Team

BMX came through an activity set up by my photography club. This one was especially fun because we were shooting late in the afternoon and moving into golden hour.

Now we’re talking. Finally, some good light.

A bunch of us from the club were shooting, which meant I could watch how other photographers approached the same action. We could move around the track, pick our positions, look at the backgrounds, and think about where the riders would be when they hit a jump or came through a corner.

BMX was incredibly fast, but unlike soccer, the track gave me one huge advantage: I knew where the riders were going.

They had a set direction. The jump wasn’t moving. The corner wasn’t moving. I could choose my position, watch the rider approach, start tracking, and have a pretty good idea where the photograph was going to happen.

Whether I actually pressed the shutter at exactly the right moment was another matter.

Sometimes I got a rider beautifully framed in the air.

Sometimes I got a wheel.

There’s probably an artistic market for isolated BMX tires somewhere. I have no doubt. Do they have OnlyFans for that kind of thing?

The better light helped, but BMX also made me think more about the entire frame. Freezing somebody in midair is cool, but if there is a dumpster, a random spectator, or another distraction behind them, the photograph can still look like crap.

I had to think ahead. Where would the rider enter the frame? What was behind them? What angle showed the jump best? Where was the light coming from?

The photograph had to start happening in my head before it happened in front of the camera.

I also ended up editing some corporate logos out of a few photographs, which was a whole other little Photoshop lesson I hadn’t planned on. Gotta avoid trademark and copyright infringement.

There always seems to be another lesson.

Golf: Waiting for One Really, Really Fast Moment

Shooting golf happened because my son Chris has become a golf fanatic lately. That gave me an excuse to spend time with him and another completely different sport to point the camera at.

Win-win.

We were working in New Mexico and usually shooting in the late afternoon. The bright New Mexico sun is not particularly subtle. It basically says, “Here I am. Deal with it.”

Embrace the suck!

Golf had a completely different rhythm from everything else I had photographed. Basketball, soccer, roller derby, and BMX all involve a lot of continuous movement. Golf has plenty of time where almost nothing appears to be happening, followed by a fraction of a second where everything happens.

I got sand trap shots. I got putting. I got driving. I got some photographs I really liked.

But there is still one photograph I’m chasing.

I want the exact moment when the club contacts the ball.

I don’t even care which club anymore. Driver, iron, whatever. I just want that frame where the club face and the ball meet.

You would think this would be simple. I know exactly where the ball is. I know exactly where the golfer is. Nobody is running across the frame. Nothing is flying around unpredictably.

Just press the shutter at the right moment.

Easy, right?

Ya...ummm...we’ll go with that.

That club is moving FAST. Shoot too early and it hasn’t reached the ball. Shoot too late and the ball is already gone. Needless to say, golf has become my lesson in timing. Everything is sitting right there in front of me, but the photograph I want exists for only a tiny fraction of a second.

I think I may have figured out how I want to try it next time. Now I just need another chance to test the theory. Perhaps a future blog post idea...hmmm?

Chris is a golf fanatic, so I suspect I’ll have plenty more opportunities.

Football: All the Lessons Showed Up at Once

Most recently I photographed football, and this one felt like several of the previous sports got together and decided to test me at the same time.

The game started with beautiful late-afternoon light. The warm light was hitting the players perfectly, and early on the camera and I were actually getting along. I caught the quarterback with the ball pulled back and ready to throw, eyes looking downfield, defenders coming after him, and enough light to keep things relatively clean. For a little while.

Football has bodies everywhere. On running plays, the person with the ball can be surrounded by blockers, defenders, officials, and assorted arms and legs. I found myself trying to track the ball carrier through traffic while autofocus occasionally developed its own opinion about which person deserved my attention. Thanks, Sony. I appreciate the input. I still need to figure out a few autofocus tricks.

The interesting part was that football didn’t feel completely unfamiliar. I could see pieces of the other sports starting to come together. I was watching where plays were developing, thinking about where somebody might appear, anticipating the moment instead of waiting for it, and trying not to get distracted by every other player moving through the frame.

Then the sun started going down. The light was changing by the minute.

Apparently the sun did not receive the memo that I needed it to stop getting darker.

As the light changed and slowly disappeared, the photography problem changed. I still needed enough shutter speed to freeze the action, but now there was less and less light available. ISO went up, noise increased, and the clean golden-hour look from the beginning of the game slowly disappeared.

One of my later shots caught a receiver stretching out for a pass with the football right at his hands. The picture had considerably more noise than the earlier shots, and technically it wasn’t as clean. With a little editing, though, I ended up with a photograph I really liked. More importantly, I caught the moment. That one helped change the way I think about technically perfect photographs. I’d rather have a little noise in the exact right moment than a perfectly clean photograph where absolutely nothing is happening.

Perfect settings don’t mean much if I miss the picture.

There Is No Magic “Sports” Setting

When I started shooting sports, I think part of me assumed that eventually I would discover the correct settings for sports photography. We all know what assuming does.

Shutter speed here. Aperture there. Autofocus setting here. ISO somewhere around this number.

Done.

Sports photographer!

Nope...WRONG!

Six sports later, I’m realizing the settings are only a starting point. A dark gym, a soccer field in late-afternoon sun, a BMX track during golden hour, New Mexico sunlight on a golf course, and a football game that continues after sunset are completely different photography problems.

Even during the same game, everything can and will change.

The light changes. My location changes. The athlete changes direction. Somebody moves in front of me. The action goes somewhere I didn’t predict. Autofocus finds someone who has absolutely nothing to do with the photograph I’m trying to make. The camera can help me solve those problems, but it still has no idea what photograph I want.

Damn the luck.

That part is still my job.

Learning to Watch

The technical side of sports photography matters. I’m learning more about shutter speed, autofocus, burst shooting, ISO, aperture, lenses, light, and how all of those things work together. But one of the biggest challenges has almost nothing to do with camera settings. I’m learning to watch instead of simply look. There is a difference.

If I wait until I see the moment I want and then react to it, there’s a pretty good chance I’ve already missed it. I’m learning to watch body position, direction, expressions, where people are looking, and how the action is developing.

Interestingly, wildlife photography has been teaching me the same thing. A heron changes posture before it takes off. A bird looks in a direction before it moves. Animals give little clues if I actually pay attention.

Athletes do too.

Hopefully none of the football players fly away like the birds do before I get the shot.

Although at the speed some of them move, I’m not completely ruling it out.

The Best Part Wasn’t Really the Sports

Somewhere in all of this I realized that the photographs aren’t the only things I’m collecting.

Meeka’s tournament gave me my first big basketball lesson, even if it produced approximately 3,000 examples of what not to do. Gwendolynne’s YMCA games gave me a chance to go back and prove to myself that I had actually learned something from the disaster.

Soccer let me photograph an important moment for a friend and his daughter. The photography club gave me an afternoon at the BMX track with a group of people learning together. Golf has given me time with Chris while he dives headfirst into something he really enjoys.

Those experiences matter as much as the photographs.

Probably more.

The daily challenge keeps putting me in places I might not otherwise have gone and giving me excuses to try things I don’t know how to do. Sometimes I come home with a photograph I’m pretty damned proud of. Sometimes I come home with several thousand reasons to try something differently next time. I’m considerably less bothered by the bad photographs than I used to be. Some are keepers. Some are lessons. A few are photographic evidence that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. They all count.

So What Kind of Photographer Am I?

I still don’t know.

I take pictures of stuff. Lots and lots of stuff and things.

That answer seems to be holding up pretty well so far, so I’m going with it.

I don’t know whether sports photography will ever become a specialty for me, and right now I don’t particularly care. The whole point of the daily challenge was to try things I didn’t know how to do and see what happened.

Sports photography has certainly delivered on that.

Six sports. Six completely different problems. A lot of missed shots, some good ones, some really good ones, and considerably more understanding of my camera than I had when I started.

And I’m still chasing that damned golf ball at impact.

Apparently, sports photography really is six different hobbies.

So far.

Like I need another hobby!

James@august23media.com

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