Sports Photography - True Photography?

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #5270923
^^^ Kinda like moving a day care center next to a Dingo farm...?

I've been shooting my great- nephews baseball games for a couple of years now. I've sold some to other parents and gave many more away. I thing I learned it's not as easy as it looks. I was approached by other teams to do their action shots for them this year. But I passed , I feel I need another year, for that. And I really haven't decided if I want to get that involved in it.

I've had computer problems lately. So, I moved all my images to external hard drives. I'll try to dig some out and post some.

What do you call a brain surgeon who graduates at the bottom of his class?
A brain surgeon!

Gee, Frank. Depress me before noon.

I shoot sports for my kids, and it's not all point & shoot. You have to get to the right place to get the best faces and movement. I don't just snap away, either. You have to decide what kind of movement you want to catch: i.e., kicking, pushing, running, etc. You don't just take 2000 pictures and hope you get something good. It's an art to get the angle just right, but also skill to know when to get the burst going.

If the reason you posted this is to have a good excuse to get a sports telephoto lens, I'd say, "Go for it!" I think that makes a huge difference in what your final result is. I think the fact that we say the photographer is what is important means something in this area, but the gear will definitely make your job easier. I know after I got my 70-200 2.8 IS, I became less concerned about all the buttons and more ready to work on the fun stuff. And you know my theory about gear, "If you use it $1 a day and will use it for that length of time to pay of it, it's worth it." So I paid $1600 for the lens, I need to use it for 5 years to pay for it to make it worth it to me. And I can say, 'I do use it enough to make it worth it.

This was my first year for HS sports photography and each sport has it's challenges. Even though I have done well, the parents love my work and my business has grown, I have noticed that the quality of my work continues to improve. I had no real knowledge of some sports before I started shooting them, so I studied them. Most sports photographers will say that you need a knowledge of the sport you are shooting and I agree because you need to be able to anticipate what might happen next. the more I learn about a new sport, the better I am.

Timing is everything, and patience helps. I guess if I can do it anybody can.

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JRB wrote in post #5271174
Timing is everything, and patience helps. I guess if I can do it anybody can.

Nice catch...

You call it "Timing and Patience" but I'd call it "Knowledge and Preparation."

You obviously knew what *could* happen if a UHP gets too much air under the hull and you were prepared to capture it if it happened.

A less knowledgeable person wouldn't have even had their camera up and ready.

craftgirl wrote in post #5270694
I wonder if he posted this just to elicit passionate responses from sports photographers because it just seems so unrealistic to me that anyone (who was serious about and learned in photography) would think that any type of photography would require less knowledge and skill than another....

Good Job Brad...lol. It's good to see people defending their genre so well.


You should share some of your sports action images with us. I'd love to see your work.

I actually was being serious\honest in my questions....
But thanks to all of you, I have had some major points\facts pointed out to me that I just overlooked! Thanks everyone!

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #5270923
^^^ Kinda like moving a day care center next to a Dingo farm...?

Hahahaha..... Nice

Just like anything in photography, it's about knowing what you are shooting very well.

To shoot sports, you have to know the game and be able to predict how the action might unfold. They you have to be in the right place with the right lens and the right exposure to get it. That is never easy.

Sure anyone can be shoot sports but not every one is good at it

My wife occasionally shoots sports with me. She doesn't know much about sports and I have to help her a bit with the exposure settings. Her signal to noise ratio is low due to her lack of knowledge but she has mastered AI Servo focus and comes back with some beautiful shots.

I process her images separately from mine and I put her own watermark on them so I can give her credit for her work. Once I put our images together I often am unable to tell who took what without looking at the watermark.

So, yes, just about anyone can shoot sports with a little training. Your timing and knowledge of what works best gets better over time.

Ill jump in with my 1/2 cent worth. ( no, not a full 2 cents )

If you think about it outside the box, from outside the industry. Studio stuff is the easy part for the "not real photographers". You get a pretty girl to sit down, camera on a tripod, controllable light, controllable background, and all day to get a good shot. Sports on the other hand, you cant controll anything, some places, not even where you stand. So you really have to be on top of your game to get a good shot.

In reality I beleave the " real photography" comes into play depending on your level of competency. If you suck but have $150,000 in equipment in your studio are you a real photog. Or have 1 body and 1 lens, but sell every shot from the side lines? In any profession the bottom line is how good you are at what you do. If you are in demand you are most deffinatley "real"!

You know how you can make a wine glass sing by rubbing the rim with your finger? Well there is a guy here in D.C. that does that . He really makes his living by playing this table full of different glasses. He has been doing it for a long time. Even been on Leno. And put his kids thru school with it. But is he a "real musician"? Given the level at which he performs, I think so. Unconventional, out of the norm, off the beaten path , how ever you want to put, put definatley a "real musician!!

This is him..... ( not my vid) there are a bunch of him there.
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=phqymc8anO0

As my signature says: Stand, point & shoot. Sports photography uses the same principle. The closest other genre is probably street photography>>fleeting moments, many components interacting and moving. Seems like true photography to me.

The big thing in being a professional sports photographer, or any type of pro photographer is that you need to get great shots that are valuable to others every time. Sure you might not get a "perfect" photo every shoot, but you need to take photos that will make you money consistantly.

Not just anyone can do this at a drop of a hat, sure most people could learn to take technically correct images, but even then without a proper sense of timing and knowing what looks good, they wont consistantly get great images. Either because their timing was off, or bad composition.

1/10 of a second can be the difference between a cover shot and garbage. And its really easy to miss that moment if you just spray and pray every time.

THE moment lasts for a micro second any one can catch that moment with a lot of luck. how ever to be able to catch that moment day in day out is the sign of a good pro. the sign of a excellent pro is one that can do the above but can get the composition and focusing spot on

Wow, my parents are exactly the same.

I strongly believe sports photography lies in the composition, then after that, just "spray and pray".

For example, I had mentally composed this shot already,then shot away as he arrived at the curve: