Sporting Chance: Back to Basics

At first glance it seems it should be easy to capture if not a great then certainly a good sports picture. After all, we watch sports events on television and have all the benefits of instant replay and slow motion to help us feel like experts when it comes to analyzing a play or a player. But I've based my freelance photography around sports and action images for more than 27 years, and I can tell you that when you're down on the sidelines the action moves faster than you might think, and making good pictures of athletes is a great challenge even for the best of us.

Here are some thoughts about the basics of the process and the essentials of the equipment that can help you get closer to memorable sports shots.

Freeze Frames
Stopping the action will capture peak moments, and to do that you'll need a fast shutter speed. I try to achieve a shutter speed of at least 1/500 second, but often times the action will require 1/1000 second or even higher. I used 1/1000 to freeze the tennis ball as it connected with the racquet of the high school player. Late afternoon sun provided enough light for me to easily achieve that shutter speed, and it gave my subject a beautiful, sunlit skin tone as well.

Note that I positioned myself so that my composition included a clean background; there are no officials, ball boys, trash cans or advertising signs in sight. This kind of positioning can be difficult, but it's foremost in my mind as I compose a photograph.

Often the best way to get a clean background is by using a long lens. A telephoto or zoom with a focal length of 200, 300, 400 or even 600mm can narrow the field of view and help eliminate objects that distract the viewer from the subject. For the tennis shot I was just off court and used a zoom lens at a focal length of 250mm. The dark fence screen made a clean background that helped make the player easier to focus on.

Great Expectations
Next comes a sports photography basic that's all about the game and the players: anticipation. Simply, anticipating the action is vital to the success of a sports picture. Many sports, like tennis, are repetitive. An athlete will repeat the same action again and again during the course of the competition, so I study my subjects before I take a picture. This high school athlete had a strong backhand and executed it well. I knew—I anticipated—that she would make several backhand volleys and I was ready to press the shutter release at the exact moment the ball left the racquet. If my subject had been Andy Roddick I'd have watched a practice session or earlier match to learn how he hits, moves and reacts. Sports highlights are invaluable when preparing to photograph a sports event. Becoming a keen study of the subjects you're going to photograph will increase your percentages of winners.

The Big Difference
The overhead shot of the volleyball player is a unique image, but it's built on the same basics we've talked about. I achieved a clean background by locating my camera above the court. I studied the player in practice and in games earlier in the tournament, so anticipating the action and capturing the perfect moment of his serve was possible. My light wasn't sunshine; rather, it was sports strobe lighting that gave me a 1/4000 second flash speed to freeze the action in the indoor arena.

This image attracts attention every time it's published, but it's firmly rooted in the basics. What I added here was my desire to find a different view, one that was not exploited by every other photographer. I can often accomplish that by using a remote camera—an SLR camera placed in a location not accessible to photographers during competition. In this case my study of the player helped me pinpoint his exact serve location so I could position the remote camera directly overhead. After that, it was a matter of anticipation and a quick finger on the remote trigger. (The gear for this photo was a Nikon digital SLR, with an 80-200mm Zoom-NIKKOR, secured by two Bogen Magic Arms with Bogen Super Clamps and a safety cable. I manually focused the camera, then triggered it from courtside using a PocketWizard MultiMAX Transceiver system. Lighting came from four Elinchrom sport strobes.) Permission from the competition director and the arena was required here; so was liability insurance. But the results were worth the effort.

Night Vision
The third image also shows the basics at work, and it's an example of how technology can help us get pictures that were once pretty much impossible.

Sports shooters are often faced with fast action taking place under poor lighting, whether in dimly-lit gymnasiums or outdoor stadiums at night. It's a rough combination. Now along comes a camera that's solved the problem for me. The Nikon D3, with its nine-frame-per-second frame rate and its extremely clean, high sensitivity capability of ISO 6400, is a sports photographer's dream camera.

There are many venues that are so dark that a shutter speed of 1/125 second is all that's possible. To make it tougher, sport strobe lighting is often restricted or difficult to install. The D3 brings new life to these impossible situations. The sprint car racing photo was taken in one of the darkest venues I've ever been in, but I got the car, illuminated by a single mercury vapor light, at ISO 6400 at 1/500 second in a burst of nine frames per second.

With technology overcoming the poor light, the rest was all about finding the right spot, anticipating the action and stopping it cold. In other words, the basics.

Note: More of Dave’s ideas and images are featured at his website, www.daveblackphotography.com. Be sure to check out his tutorial articles in On the Road and Workshop at the Ranch.