NFL: Bears Vs Giants - Nice Catch

Both shots turned out great

Awesome shots as always.

Hey Dennis, Great shots! I don't mean to hijack your thread (or for that matter always bugging you for tips) but do you have any guidelines for shooting football that I should keep in mind? I'm lugging out the 400 to shoot a college football game for my employer soon.

Great shots as always! Die-hard Bears fan here!

Thanks, y'all. Alex, shooting football is one of the most enjoyable sports to work, IMO. It's one of the only ones where you can "almost" go wherever you want, so a lot of the "secret" is knowing where to go. Phil had an excellent primer on how to shoot football that's still around.

I've had a few folks contact me to ask how to catch the ball in frame for shots like these. Honestly, the biggest "trick" I know is to shoot with both eyes open. Once I taught myself how to do this, my percentage of shots like this that had the ball (as well as baseball players catching the ball, headers in soccer, etc) increased appreciably. In fact, in the shots above, I had both eyes away from the camera as the play developed, saw Aromashodu break downfield, swung the camera to where he was, put one eye close to the eyepiece (keeping one eye open as long as I could), found him, tapped the * button to get AF, then once the ball was entering the field of view, mashed the shutter.

I takes some practice, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty straightforward.

dmwierz wrote in post #8529322
Thanks, y'all. Alex, shooting football is one of the most enjoyable sports to work, IMO. It's one of the only ones where you can "almost" go wherever you want, so a lot of the "secret" is knowing where to go. Phil had an excellent primer on how to shoot football that's still around.

I've had a few folks contact me to ask how to catch the ball in frame for shots like these. Honestly, the biggest "trick" I know is to shoot with both eyes open. Once I taught myself how to do this, my percentage of shots like this that had the ball (as well as baseball players catching the ball, headers in soccer, etc) increased appreciably. In fact, in the shots above, I had both eyes away from the camera as the play developed, saw Aromashodu break downfield, swung the camera to where he was, put one eye close to the eyepiece (keeping one eye open as long as I could), found him, tapped the * button to get AF, then once the ball was entering the field of view, mashed the shutter.

I takes some practice, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty straightforward.

I had a photographer say the same thing to me regarding soccer, & it helps. It does take practice, but I was getting the hang of it eventually.

I believe the photog across the field (bottom right) enjoyed the play but missed the shot. Sorta like I often feel.

Dennis, that's a great capture - as usual.

Thanks for sharing.

Nice stuff Dennis, glad to see you still shooting. I'll be at SF tomorrow for the HS kickoff classic.

Gotta be the first shot for me - the 'inch off the hands' capture is something I strive for. I think I've had two this season. In about 12 games.

It always amazes me on the color quality and sharpness of your photos.....any tips on exposure? Were you using flash or is this stadium lighting? Shooting Raw and then post processed or out of the box?

Kevin - Have fun today. That "three fer" is always a good time. Dan and Daren - thanks.

Flash isn't allowed above HS, so these are shot ambient. Focal Length 400 mm; Exposure Time 1/1000 sec; Aperture f/2.8; ISO Equivalent 1600. JPEG Highest Quality. The light at Soldier Field is average for a pro stadium. The only "Secret" I have (and it's not that secret since I've shared it with a bunch of folks) is I roughly follow the post processing discussed in this article from a few years back:

http://www.sportsshoot​er.com/news/1415

I have a PhotoShop action I developed that adds an auto-levels and an Unsharp Mask 85/1/4 to the Noise Ninja settings detailed above, and I run all selected images right out of the camera through this action. Occasionally I'll have to manually process an image or two, but I've found on more than 95% of what I shoot, this is all I do. Then I straighten, crop for effect and do any minor toning required. After this I resize the images for upload to the size required (varies depending on for whom I'm shooting, but normally this is to 3200x2133 pixels and 200 dpi) with another PS add-on called Genuine Fractals. Both of the images above are pretty aggressive crops - the action portions of the images occupied the lower left 1/4 of the frame in the original shots. They were taken from the opposite side of the field from where the action happened. I was kneeling at the back corner of the end zone, and the catch occurred at the other sideline, 5-yard line.

Of course, this ain't all I do, as all shots must also be fully captioned and renamed (per the customer's spec) and transmitted to the wire service. Sound like a lot of work? Well, it is. Last Saturday's game started at 7:00 PM. I arrived at the stadium at 4:00; shot warm-ups; covered the game; did my post-game review of over 500 images; down-selected to about 50 shots; ran all 50 shots through the action above; reviewed them again and the picked 40 best; cropped/toned/resized/​captioned/renamed those 40; transmitted them all to the wire service using Soldier Field's internet; and finally dragged myself out to the parking lot at 12:30 AM, getting to bed at 2:00AM This is the "real" secret behind working an event like this - there is a LOT more involved than just hanging out on the sidelines shooting pictures.

I didn't even mention that I also sometimes do an edit/resize/caption/re​name/submit during halftime of the top 10 images from the first half. Football is relatively easy in this regard. With some wire services, you will be submitting images during the event (like baseball, where you've got your laptop with you in the photo well), and are doing the work detailed above between innings every couple innings, or whenever you capture anything interesting - all while still trying not to miss any of the action.

Hope this helps.

Wow...great response, I am sure the general public thinks all that happens is you take the picture and then you are done. Your response sure puts perspective on the entire process, You have my respect.

Thanks, Daren. Seems the "hot" topic over on SportsShooter, and elsewhere, is "how do I get credentials" and then the inevitable battle between pro's and those aspiring to be pro's.

I must get 5 or more emails/PM's each week from people wanting me to tell them how to get credentials to pro or NCAA games, and while I try to help out, it's firstly not well-known how long some of us work to get to this point, and how many youth events are worked in order to get to the HS level, and how long we work at the HS level before getting our first NCAA break, and how many NCAA games we work until we get into our first pro games, and after all this, how much work it is to cover a pro sporting event.

Here are a couple more shots from last week's game. I'm hoping to cover next Thursday's final pre-season game against the Browns.

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dmwierz wrote in post #8543395
Kevin - Have fun today. That "three fer" is always a good time. Dan and Daren - thanks.

Flash isn't allowed above HS, so these are shot ambient. Focal Length 400 mm; Exposure Time 1/1000 sec; Aperture f/2.8; ISO Equivalent 1600. JPEG Highest Quality. The light at Soldier Field is average for a pro stadium. The only "Secret" I have (and it's not that secret since I've shared it with a bunch of folks) is I roughly follow the post processing discussed in this article from a few years back:

http://www.sportsshoot​er.com/news/1415

I have a PhotoShop action I developed that adds an auto-levels and an Unsharp Mask 85/1/4 to the Noise Ninja settings detailed above, and I run all selected images right out of the camera through this action. Occasionally I'll have to manually process an image or two, but I've found on more than 95% of what I shoot, this is all I do. Then I straighten, crop for effect and do any minor toning required. After this I resize the images for upload to the size required (varies depending on for whom I'm shooting, but normally this is to 3200x2133 pixels and 200 dpi) with another PS add-on called Genuine Fractals. Both of the images above are pretty aggressive crops - the action portions of the images occupied the lower left 1/4 of the frame in the original shots. They were taken from the opposite side of the field from where the action happened. I was kneeling at the back corner of the end zone, and the catch occurred at the other sideline, 5-yard line.

Of course, this ain't all I do, as all shots must also be fully captioned and renamed (per the customer's spec) and transmitted to the wire service. Sound like a lot of work? Well, it is. Last Saturday's game started at 7:00 PM. I arrived at the stadium at 4:00; shot warm-ups; covered the game; did my post-game review of over 500 images; down-selected to about 50 shots; ran all 50 shots through the action above; reviewed them again and the picked 40 best; cropped/toned/resized/​captioned/renamed those 40; transmitted them all to the wire service using Soldier Field's internet; and finally dragged myself out to the parking lot at 12:30 AM, getting to bed at 2:00AM This is the "real" secret behind working an event like this - there is a LOT more involved than just hanging out on the sidelines shooting pictures.

I didn't even mention that I also sometimes do an edit/resize/caption/re​name/submit during halftime of the top 10 images from the first half. Football is relatively easy in this regard. With some wire services, you will be submitting images during the event (like baseball, where you've got your laptop with you in the photo well), and are doing the work detailed above between innings every couple innings, or whenever you capture anything interesting - all while still trying not to miss any of the action.

Hope this helps.

Haven't been at this for long but I feel your pain. I was at the Roger's Cup one day for over SIXTEEN HOURS. Got there at 8:30, set up, shot some morning matches at 11, then got a bit of a break at 5 and was able to eat. Then a long four hour match began at 7, and a final one after that. When all was said and done I wasn't even able to leave until 1 AM.

I'm just thankful my employer didn't want the shots the day of.