Sports Photography and more!

Using the Rules of Thirds:  What makes a photo appealing?  This is a photo taken with my regular point and shoot Canon camera. It’s one of those easy to carry type cameras that can be purchased for under $200.00…Nothing fancy about it!

To Begin:  You divide the photo with two vertical lines and two horizontal lines.  It the Tic-Tac-Toe of photography.

Place your subject at any of the four intersecting points.  Where do you want the viewer to focus? 

In the photo, my daughter is the center of focus and the intent was to draw the viewer into the photo by placing the subject at the bottom right intersection.  Stepping into the water under a big blue sky.  I wanted to capture the feeling of  a day at the beach; and how small my daughter was. 

How do you get your point of interest at an intersection?  It’s all about how you crop the photo in post editing.  When taking the photo, shoot wide with an idea in mind.  Save the final framing to later on. 

What size print are you going to use?  4×6, 5×7, 8×10?  Place the subject at an intersection when you crop to your specific format.   Each intersections can do different things for a photo and change the feel.  Final test – ask someone for some honest criticism. 

And a final word on criticism…don’t ask for it if you are personally attached to the photo.  Try rules of thirds with a flower photo to hone your skills.

I have a collection of sunsets that jump out at me.  I’ll call this my sunset post and put them all in one place as I find them.  

“Everything about this picture breathes “great picture!” From the cropping to the composition. Great!” NCPA Judges’ comments.  http://www.ncpress.com/09editawards/divisionA.html It’s awards time again!  It’s pretty cool to be a three time award winner in the Sports Photography category.  I am indebted to the Havelock News for their continued support.  Let’s face it, I’m just a guy with a camera and they continually publish my work and even pay me!  I’m not a struggling photojournalist trying to make a name for myself.  They don’t have to submit my work to NCPA, yet, year after year they do.

When you shoot for the paper, there are a ton of shots that never see the light of day.  It’s unfortunate, but when there is only one photo that’s going to be used, these types of shots never make it. 

This one deserves some light.   It’s purely action and everyone who has played football can relate to those moments when every yard counts and players sacrifice their body to make it to the next 1^st down. 

 

Normally, I don’t photograph cheerleaders.  If you look through my gallery, I might have one or two.  Out of the thousands of photos I’ve taken, photographing cheerleaders and fluffy frilly stuff is just not in my repertoire.  However, this day was different. 

I’m just relaxing on the sidelines watching the half-time cheerleading show and then this cheerleader comes out and begins a solo routine.  Of all the games I’ve been to, I’ve never seen a cheerleader solo.  I had the camera ready and just waiting to see what this was all about.  After the first couple flips, I was hooked.  This was gonna be cool!

Let’s go over the basics of the shot before getting crazy with all the technical details.  Here’s a snap shot of the original.  I’m not a photographic genius by any stretch of the imagination, capable of the perfect shot in a single “click.”

In the original selection process, I didn’t even select the shot I ended up using!  Here’s how I was set:The lower you are the higher the athlete appears.  I was laying down on the track.  Having perspective helps; the scoreboard in the backdrop makes the shot!  It adds to the height.  Now it’s all about camera settings and capturing the image as the cheerleader passes through the viewfinder.

Taken in RAW with ISO set at 1600, F1.8 with a shutter set at 1/500sec.  I had auto white balance set, because it didn’t matter.  I’m shooting in RAW.  RAW allowed for significant adjustment after the shot was taken.  While I don’t always do this, because it’s incredibly time consuming, I occasionally shot RAW to keep my skills fresh.

 

Now for something really COOL and completely against NCPA policy of illegal use of Photoshop to alter the pic.  It’s unethical to cut people out of photos or add in people who weren’t actually there.  You can crop, adjust the levels, or enhance the picture slightly (i.e. sharpening).

I got all these sequences; I got creative and added them all into one shot for the fun of it!

I’m guilty of blogger’s neglect!  I forgot I even had his thing going and then I received a comment notification via email, “Wow, fantastic blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? You make blogging look easy. The overall look of your site is magnificent, as well as the content!”  It was from Victoria Versicherung, and I’m sorry, I can’t even pronounce the last name or know where her location was from, but WOW!  My Blog is international! It inspired me to write and update my poorly neglected blog and let everyone know what I’ve been up to in the world of photography.  It may take me a little bit to get back up to speed; please have patience as I relearn some of the intricacies of blogging. 

What’s my favorite shot?  I’m a sucker for a good sunset photo.  The sun setting through the trees created all these great colors and I just had to capture it at the right moment in play.  Surprisingly enough, this is the first and only softball game I’ve photographed.  When the runner came through, the ballpark lights were on and everything just worked out perfectly.

 

To schedule coverage of your game, just give me a call at 252 422 3614.  I offer free coverage of any game in Havelock.  I’m not saying I am going to get a great sunset shot for you, but I will get a few shots that I’m sure you’ll be very pleased with.

 See the whole album here:

http://havelocksports.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=481219&CategoryID=18341&ListSubAlbums=0

Baseball!  It has to be one of my favorite sports to photograph.  Just getting the shot is sometimes half the battle.  I prefer to shoot near third base so I can get a clear shot of slides into second.  Sometimes I even get lucky and get a nice shot of some third base action.  One complication of shooting near third is the coach sometimes get in the way of the shoot.

Here’s one of my favorite shots from a game I shot last week Thursday.  Notice how close he came to tagging him.  The runner did make it into third.

 

See the whole album here:
http://havelocksports.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=503013&CategoryID=18332&ListSubAlbums=0

What makes a great image?  For the majority of people, when they look at a good shot, they don’t know why, but it’s visually appealing.  It’s something that they can’t explain- They just like the shot.  My wife is like that.  I either get a ‘WOW!’, a ‘hmmm…’ or a ‘that’s terrible.’  There is hardly an explanation behind it. What separates a point and shoot photographer from a professional photographer is that a professional has mastered the appeal factor.  They have mastered the fundamentals of photography and apply them without thought.  Their camera is an extension of their body and thoughts flow freely from mind to camera.  In this shot:  the perfect centering of the ball, the dust flying, the equal positioning of the players, and the crispness of the shot make this a good image.What you don’t see: the backdrop enhances contrast.  When you take a bright subject and position against a dark backdrop- POW!  Colors come alive!  When I shoot, I am always looking for a background where my subjects will stand out.   The green in this shot does that.  It turns a good shot into a great one!

To analyze this shot further I’ve extracted the Camera Data. ( In photoshop you can hold down the ‘Shift’+'Ctrl’+'Alt’+'I’ keys to see it)

From top to bottom:  1/4000 sec shutter- Their moving fast, but the ball is moving REALLY fast!  To get a decently crisp ball, I shot with a very fast shutter.

F2.5 Aperture- I want the players to stand out against a sufficiently blurred backdrop.  I want them in focus and the backdrop out of focus.

ISO 125- The lower the ISO the more vibrant the image straight out of the camera.  The higher the ISO the more grain in the photo.

Now what to do?  Lets look at sharpening:

Now these are not my sharpening settings- I can’t tell you everything.  What I will tell you is that every digital image can benefit from a little UnMask Sharp (USM) or sharpening.  Now you may believe that your images are perfect straight out of the camera.  Well that’s because you’re letting your camera do the sharpening for you.  I keep mine turned off to allow for more control in Photoshop.  It’s like this, I would prefer to have an image with no sharpening than an image that has been sharpened since sharpening cannot be undone.  It’s like those that shoot RAW vs those that use JPG.  The battle can go either way, but it’s important that you know the difference- then you can make an educated choice on which method you’re going to use- in camera sharpening or post sharpening.

And finally, the level adjustment:

 

Levels are something that I’m always checking.  That’s the beauty of digital, I can check to see if I’m shooting overexposed, underexposed or just right by looking at the histogram.  Too far to the left (as you’re looking at screen) and the image is underexposed.  Too far to the right, and I’m overexposing.  A nice range of light will produce a histogram like you see above.  Though I do have alot in the dark side and a spike in the light side, indicating a hotspot.

I hope you’ve found this short tutorial interesting.  See you out there!

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What happened to all the photos?  I have been implementing a mycapture update to the design template of the site so everything had to come down to work correctly. 

The problem with the old design was that all the products were displayed in one LONG list, so a solution was to organize it into tabs where you could easily see all the different choices. 

There are also a few enhancements like greeting cards that I think you’ll really like.  I also restructured the pricing.  It is cheaper, but we’ll see how it works out.