How to Photograph Football--14 Tips for Friday HS Football

[Zivnuska]

Let me expand on Kevin's point about knowing a team's tendencies and how it can help you.

The high school team that I shoot most often has a 'Hail Mary' play designed to get a last second desperation touchdown. Most teams have such a play. Because I have an excellent relationship with the coach and try to be helpful to the program, he lets me shoot anywhere, anytime. This includes practice and the locker room before the game, halftime, and post game. He also tells me if a trick play is planned and the details of who, when, and where the play will be used. Back to the 'Hail Mary' pass. Because of the positive relationship with the coach, I know which side of the field the pass will be thrown to, the planned deception and who the eventual intended receiver will be. It doesn't matter who the ends are or what the wind is doing. That play will be run in a specific manner by that team. It's what they practice, what the coach believes in, and what they will do this year.

That's nice to know! I will be in position to shoot that potential game winning pass and be focused on the correct player. Guaranteed.

Phil

[snyderman]

Thank you Phil. Very timely and helps me immensely as a first timer this fall.

dave

[Sledhed]

You give 14 tips but failed to mention Rule #1 - Don't get hit!

[gconda]

awesome thread ! We also need one for season ticket holders at NFL Games. I'm considering the 300f4 + 1.4 on my 40D

[dmwierz]

Kevin:

Regarding 7.4, I have always been against HSS with sports but after seeing this, I am strongly reconsidering. Scroll down and read/see image 9 and 10. WOW!! Granted, he is doing this with about $4k worth of speedlights and an $8k camera, but again, WOW!!

http://www.daveblackphotography.com/...p/07-2009.html

Well, Dave is using EIGHT (2x4 Square) SB-900 speedlights (or one 4 Square with each SB at +2.0 power level), which reduces the chances that you'll get ghosting, which is one of the major drawbacks to using HSS (since it drastically reduces the flash output power).

Dave Black is a lighting wizard, so I can't really disagree with him or his techniques, but I'd venture a guess he could have also gotten very similar results with one or two standard strobe lights (duration around 1/2000s) firing straight at the subjects. But one of the big points about him using the 4 Square product is that it uses battery-powered speedlights thus removing the need to buy strobes and to find electricity in the field.

[dmwierz]

Oh, and Phil, based on my first browsing of your post, it looks pretty good. I'll take another look when I get the chance.

Dennis

[Big K]

Originally Posted by dmwierz

Dave Black is a lighting wizard, so I can't really disagree with him or his techniques, but I'd venture a guess he could have also gotten very similar results with one or two standard strobe lights (duration around 1/2000s) firing straight at the subjects.

Given the amount of ambient light still in the picture I'm not sure how would he be able to eliminate ghosting if he was shooting at a sync speed of 1/250 regardless of the flash duration especially given the speed they are traveling.

[Zivnuska]

Originally Posted by dmwierz

Oh, and Phil, based on my first browsing of your post, it looks pretty good. I'll take another look when I get the chance.

Dennis

Thanks Dennis. Your insights will be greatly appreciated.

Phil



For those of you not familiar with Dennis Wierzbicki, he is one of the nation's premier sport shooters and has covered several sports at the top professional levels. He has always been gracious in sharing his knowledge with the forum (and me).

Check out his work

http://www.pbase.com/dmwierz45/sports_shots

http://www.sportsshooter.com/port_po...50&i_id=840845

and his podcasts
http://web.mac.com/dmwierz1/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html

[USMCWayne]

Excellent advice.

I've been shooting high school sports for "awhile" Your list of tips and techniques are very helpful and a good reminder for things that are sometimes second nature, but also things that I've sort of gotten away from.

First practice is Aug 17, and our first game is Sept 4. Certainly not too early to start making plans for the upcoming season.

Thanks again for this.

[Sauk]

I learned most of my shooting tech's from Dennis as well.

The most important thing I learned is to experiment till you are happy. Last year I went from 2.8 to as high as 7 for an F stop.

I also went from ISO 800 to ISO 1600.

High school football is frustrating but it is also fun in that you get to experiment and challenge yourself.

Have fun and push yourself to the limits!

[ProwlingTiger]

I started out managing and filming (two cameras at once ) for my high school football team outside of Wichita, KS. That was 3 years ago. Of course I did photography where I could, but I didn't really get into sports photography until a year ago.

This year, I'm writing for the K-State Collegian and will be on the sidelines Friday night, for the first time with a camera in hand (shot sports before, never football).

I have a decent setup currently, apart from borrowing my dad's 580EXII. Is flash required to get the shots as the light dims? I suppose it would depend on the stadium lighting, just curious though. Not a problem one way or another

[dmwierz]

Is flash required to get the shots as the light dims

This is pretty subjective, and actually the topic of a LONG thread that goes back almost 2 years:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...d.php?t=375847

[DavidG.]

Thank you Zivnuska, I have printed out what you have said in your first post as I find it most helpful to this second year football shooter for my HS alma mater's yearbook.

[SC_Highlander]

Great advice. Thanks for posting!

[SwiftFootTim]

Great advice here, and I can only second what Phil had to say as well. If you primarily cover one team, which I'm assuming most of us in rural America do. Pay attention to their plays, the run game is a huge opportunity to get shots of backs running to the sidelines or breaking through the tackle/end hole which can lead to a nicely framed shot. If you see which backs run in sometimes you can also figure out what play is going to happen.

I'm definitely going to try the punt shooting tips you had, I always shot from the side or a little in front of the punter last year but an endzone shot of the back of the punter with rushers coming could be quite stunning indeed!

As for lighting, for those of you worried about shooting ambient due to a lack of flash, it not being permitted, etc, I was worried about using a flash as well in that I would annoy the fans. You'd be surprised that most often I asked my parents, who were watching my brother play, knew I was on the sideline shooting, and were almost in a straight line beyond me and the play, did not notice that I had in fact been using flash. The head coach of my local HS team tells me to use it always and don't worry unless the refs say to stop using it.

Great writeup and good luck to all you local photogs, season starts next week here!