High School Playoff Football

I've got one question... WTH can you do about shooting and the sun isn't to your back? Nothing?? I've got a few shots that would have been awesome had I not been shooting with the sun to my side.
Here are a few from today, tons more here
1. Perfect example of my gripe above. I tweaked a bit till I figured it was as good as it was going to get. I've got a sequence of about 5 shots leading up to this, but they're not all uploaded yet.

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I think the first and the last one are pretty solid.

5 and 6 are nice,
maybe crop a bit tighter and a bit higher aperture (2.8) give you some more depth of field and looses the busy backgrounds (spectators)

Thanks for the feedback.

My lens maxes out at 5.6 once I get past about 250mm, so I'm SOL there. Someday I hope to have a f/2.8.

Day time shooting is nice. Nice pics, I know the parents and kids love them.

pete crawford wrote in post #8934033
Day time shooting is nice. Nice pics, I know the parents and kids love them.

Thanks, Pete. I grabbed a roster on my way out and sent links to some of the players via facebook.

Here's the sequence leading up to and through the play in the first photo.

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Some nice shots in there. Love the sequence. Check thread by Matt (Eigga), he's back lit shots look quite nice.

bobbyz wrote in post #8935825
Some nice shots in there. Love the sequence. Check thread by Matt (Eigga), he's back lit shots look quite nice.

Thanks, Bobby. I've made some adjustments to the sequence I posted above. I used curves to try to give more color pop to the photos so they don't look so flat. I'm uploading them now.

I'll have to look at Matt's previous threads.

Before/After

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I like the first one best. You did a great job on the sequence. I had the same problem at my grandson's football game(the only one this year that didn't get rained out) It was a very cloudy day, but I used my photo program and changed the lighting to make the colors pop. I would post one if I could figure out how to do it. I am new to this forum.

One of the biggest things when shooting daytime sports is where you set up for your shots. Just because it is a good spot for composition does not make it a good spot if the light is bad for it. You have to consider both when deciding where to shoot from. You can't capture every play in a football game but you can improve the quality of the ones you do capture by better planning your shooting position.

You would have been far better setting up in the back of the endzone between the goal post and the cormer and shooting this play directly into the sun than shooting the angle you chose with half sun half shade. Since you picked a bad spot to shoot from you end up with a shot that is virually impossible to properly expose.

The other big problem with your images as posted is that they are pretty overexposed in general which is what is washing out all the color. I think you would have better success in post if you lowered the overall exposure, possibly made some contrast adjustments and then adjusted the shadow details in either Photoshop, LR or Aperture to regain some of the detail in the face.

Big K wrote in post #8936725
The other big problem with your images as posted is that they are pretty overexposed in general which is what is washing out all the color. I think you would have better success in post if you lowered the overall exposure, possibly made some contrast adjustments and then adjusted the shadow details in either Photoshop, LR or Aperture to regain some of the detail in the face.

+1 over-exposed.

you obviously have a great eye for the action, plus a steady hand. at f5.6, you are actually doing a great job with the backgrounds.

Only advice you need, imo, is (1) set up with the sun if possible (which you already knew) and (2) follow Big K's advice.

Big K wrote in post #8936725
One of the biggest things when shooting daytime sports is where you set up for your shots. Just because it is a good spot for composition does not make it a good spot if the light is bad for it. You have to consider both when deciding where to shoot from. You can't capture every play in a football game but you can improve the quality of the ones you do capture by better planning your shooting position.

You would have been far better setting up in the back of the endzone between the goal post and the cormer and shooting this play directly into the sun than shooting the angle you chose with half sun half shade. Since you picked a bad spot to shoot from you end up with a shot that is virually impossible to properly expose.

The other big problem with your images as posted is that they are pretty overexposed in general which is what is washing out all the color. I think you would have better success in post if you lowered the overall exposure, possibly made some contrast adjustments and then adjusted the shadow details in either Photoshop, LR or Aperture to regain some of the detail in the face.

Thank you for your advice. Your input about the sun explains why the photog from the paper was standing where he was the whole game... as seen here:

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VinnyC01 wrote in post #8936936
+1 over-exposed.

you obviously have a great for the action, plus a steady hand. at f5.6, you are actually doing a great job with the backgrounds.

Only advice you need, imo, is (1) set up with the sun if possible (which you already knew) and (2) follow Big K's advice.

All +1 over or just the ones shooting 90 deg to the sun?

Thanks for the feedback.