Category: Sports Photography

My growth as a sports photographer (so far)

Posted on by gmsiegel

This blog post chronicles my journey as a sports photographer, from Ground Zero to wherever I am now. I’m not an amateur, and I’m not a professional. I’m somewhere in-between. I shoot for a local newspaper, as well as MaxPreps and a national wire service. I cover Division 1 & 2 NCAA college sports and many high school sports.

I’ve learned alot but I’m far from done, and thank goodness for that. I’m always learning, and always trying to get better. But something happened recently that made me stop and reflect about where I am today. The other night, while I was shooting some D2 college basketball, 2 different people came to me at different times while I was on the court to ask about settings on their cameras. I guess they saw me sitting on the baseline and thought I looked like I knew what I was doing! So that got me thinking about how much I’ve learned so far in my growth as a sports photographer.

The fact that they approached me was very flattering, and I hope that I’ll always feel that way. I’m happy to help teach people who don’t know what I know learn so that they know (you know?!). When I was first starting out, I had a million questions, and was lucky enough to work with some folks who were patient enough to answer them and teach me.

Find a Good Mentor

Starting out, I literally didn’t know any sports photographers, locally or otherwise. So along with my friend Google, I starting researching and I made a list of sports photographers in my area. I sent as many emails as I could, contacting anyone and everyone. At first, I asked them if I could simply visit with them and ‘pick their brain’ about things I could do to get into this business. Like any bold canvassing campaign, most requests went unanswered, but not all of them, and the few that replied to me were invaluable. I met with them, asked them some of my million questions, and asked them to critique my sports photos. Up to this point, these photos were mostly of my kids high school and youth sports. The constructive criticism I got was amazing, and really gave me the motivation and desire to improve. I wanted to shoot the kinds of photos they shot, and I was willing to do what it took.

Be Willing to Work for Free

Can you see where this is going? These initial contacts I made were great, and with one fellow, I asked if I could tag along with him and shadow him as he shot sports. Fortunately, he was willing to help me, and I got some great experience shooting Division 2 college sports, which I’d never have had a chance to do on my own. I wasn’t shooting for a company, an agency, a wire service, or a publication- I was simply shooting for experience. This photographer agreed to let me tag along, and I agreed not to sell any of the photos I took (the NCAA has strict rules about how photos can be sold). Being able to shadow him and see what he did was awesome. I watched and learned as he explained where he shot from on the field and why, what he looked for in his photos, and thankfully, he was patient enough to answer my many questions. My photos got better, and my desire grew stronger.

I was hooked.

So what’s next? Well, learning like this is great, and it’s important to be willing to work for free, but I soon realized that the consumer-level gear I had was limiting, and so my next step was to find some opportunities to earn while I learned. Luckily, another one of those mass mailing emails came through, and I hooked up with a company that shot high school action sports. This gave me an amazing opportunity to earn some money to gradually upgrade my gear. It also gave me a chance to borrow their pro-level gear and see the differences between it and my gear. As I was able to afford better gear, it also opened up more opportunities for me to get assignments from them, because they could send me out on my own with my gear, and it wouldn’t tie up their gear. It worked out well for both of us.

[NOTE: this is the part of the story where some folks will say something like, “it’s not the gear, it’s the photographer”, which I don’t argue with. However, there are certain things that better gear simply do better. That’s all.

Know Your Gear

I love photography and I love sports. So it’s no wonder that I also love sports photography. But sports photography is very different from other kinds of photography. For example, there are often technical decisions you need to make with your camera as you shoot, and you need to do this very quickly. You see, sports photographers are allotted zero timeouts during a game! It’s important to be able to make adjustments on the fly with your camera with muscle memory, so that you don’t miss a beat. Some of these might be exposure settings, like changing a shutter speed from 1/320 sec to 1/1000 sec as you change from shooting a timeout and back to live action. Be sure that you know your gear as well as possible, so that it doesn’t slow you down when you need to make these kind of adjustments.

Raise Your Standards

One of the companies I shoot for is MaxPreps. For those of you who don’t know who they are, they’re owned by CBS Interactive, and they’re essentially the high school division of CBS Sports. They’re also know for their high quality photos. I was fortunate enough to be accepted as a MaxPreps Pro Photographer, which gives me the opportunity to cover just about any high school sports event. But being accepted isn’t easy. Most folks aren’t accepted, at least on their first try, mostly for photo quality reasons. Becoming a MaxPreps photographer has raised my game, because each gallery I shoot gets reviewed, and if the photos aren’t good enough, they’re rejected. Shooting to this standard has made me look at my photos much more critically. Many of my photos which I used to consider good, I now reject myself, because I hold myself to the same MaxPreps standard. This has just been a long-winded way of telling you to be very critical of your work. Be your own toughest critic. You’ll raise your own bar and become a better photographer.

Know the Game

Being in the right place at the right time doesn’t always get you a winning photo, but it helps. Knowing the sport you’re shooting will help you decide where to shoot from and what to look for. For example, if you’re shooting football, it’s important to know the rules of the game, and to understand the flow. It’s important to understand the tendencies of a quarterback to throw a long pass on 3rd down as he rolls out to his right. This will help you be in position to capture the shot you’re looking for. It doesn’t always happen, but you’ll be in a better position than folks who don’t know what you know. And whatever you do, be sure you’re never part of the game. Understand where it’s ok for you to shoot from and where it’s not. Be respectful and mindful of where photographers are allowed on fields, in arenas, or wherever. If I’m at a new location and unsure if it’s ok to shoot from a certain spot, I make sure to ask someone in charge ahead of time.

Shoot Low

Most sports photos look better when shot from a low perspective. Football, soccer, basketball, you name it. A low angle simply looks better. It can add drama. It can make the athlete look larger than life. So get low and shoot low. For example, I shoot football on my knees (some folks will even lie on their stomachs for a low perspective). For basketball, I usually sit on the baseline. The lower, the better.

Two Eyes and a Ball

A great piece of advice I got early on about shooting sports is that it’s important to capture two eyes and a ball. The eyes will often show you the emotion of the athlete- it could be a look of confidence, concentration, fear, surprise, you name it. But no matter what, the eyes show you the personal side of the athlete. The ball gives context to the photo. It puts you in the action with the athletes. This is such an important concept that I wrote an entire blog post about it. You can read that here.

So that’s alot. But it’s not all, and thank goodness for that. This is much of what I’ve learned so far, but I have a feeling that in a few more years, I might look back on this blog post and think, “Boy, I really didn’t know much at all back then!”. Hopefully, it’ll help you as an aspiring sports photographer, and help you learn more than you already knew.

Give Back

I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and I still have A LOT more to learn. But I’m starting to reach a level where my hard work is paying off. I appreciate the time that certain photographers took to help me learn and grow. I appreciate them letting me tag along and ask endless questions, and I appreciate the constructive criticism they gave me to help me understand what could make my photos better. So when you reach a certain level of achievement, give back. Give back to less experienced photographers and help them along, just as others may have helped you. And you’ll be surprised at not only how much you might have to share, but also how fulfilling it can be to help others.

Tip: Overexpose for low-light shooting

Posted on by gmsiegel

I often shoot sports in low light, whether it’s a Friday night high school football game or a dark high school gym. Because of this, I’m very sensitive to high ISO and noise. One of the main techniques I use is to overexpose the photo slightly and then bring things back down in Lightroom post-processing. Underexposed photos tend to show a lot of noise, which is often hard to fix well in Lightroom. But, if you intentionally overexpose the photo, the shadows/dark areas will look better in post-processing, and you can then bring down the highlights and often increase the exposure for nice results.

Here’s how things look on my camera

I shoot in Manual mode for sports. For most sports, I set the shutter speed around 1/800-1/1,000 sec. and the aperture at f2.8 and use Auto ISO (with a max. cap at 6400). I then set the Exposure Compensation somewhere around +2/3 to +1 of a stop. So, the camera determines the correct exposure based on these settings, and then overexposes it by that amount. I’m then able to do the adjustments in Lightroom as mentioned above.
Note: In order to do this, you have to use Auto ISO, and not all cameras support using this with the Exposure Compensation feature together.

Two eyes and a ball

Posted on by gmsiegel

You’ve heard it before in sports photography- a good photo shows two eyes and a ball. Well, maybe you haven’t heard that yet, so here you go, now you have.

Sports photography is faster paced than studio or other still photography. It requires you to shoot quickly, make quick adjustments, be in the right position, shoot through the action to capture emotions, get good composition, and oh yeah, have a tack-sharp image.

Hmmmm. That sounds like a lot to do. Well, it is. But when you do it all, and get it right, it’s really rewarding. Unfortunately, a lot of times, it doesn’t all come together. Your photo keeper rate will be much lower for sports photography than just about any other genre. You might take 1,000 photos (or more) for an event and only come away with 25 5-star keepers (that’s only 2.5%). That sounds like a lot of work for a small payoff, but when you get those 25 5-star photos, it somehow makes it all worthwhile.

So what makes a good action sports photo?

Two eyes and a ball. It sounds simple, but remember all of those other things above that go into the shot?

Here’s a photo that if you showed a parent or maybe a casual observer, they might say, “wow, what a great photo”. BUT…

…while we have two eyes (actually, we have four), we’re missing the ball.

So let’s add the ball…

And again, the casual observer might say, “cool, you took a photo of a football catch”. But is it a good photo? Is it the one we’re looking for? Nope. We’re missing the eyes. We want to see the players’ faces. We want to see the emotion on their faces. We want to see their anticipation in catching the ball, or being hit hard by a tackle. We want the human element.

So let’s see the difference if we can put add it all together- two eyes and a ball.

Yep- two eyes and a ball. But is it a good action sports photo?

Not yet. It’s not very sharp. Actually, if you look closely, you’ll notice the ball is in focus, but not the players’ faces. This is my fault because I didn’t have the right lens for that distance.

This is starting to get pretty nit-picky, but the fact is, it takes a lot to make a good action sports photo. The kind of photo that when you see it, you just know it’s good.

Well, remember that keeper rate we talked about? Here’s one that pulls it all together. It has good composition, it has a tight crop of the action, it shows the player with two eyes and a ball, and it’s sharply in focus.

Check, check, check, and check. Cross this one off the list- it’s a 5-star keeper. But we had to work hard for that! Sports photography is a lot of work, but it’s very rewarding when your work pays off.

How do you get a photo like this? Shoot lots. Shoot often. Shoot anything. Be your own toughest critic. Ask for help. Find photographers who are better than you and learn from them. And when you get to the point where you’re able to do this consistently, give back to help others who are trying to get there, too.

My Canon microadjustment

Posted on by gmsiegel

The whole idea of manually calibrating a camera to a specific lens was pretty intimidating to me- until I tried it. Not only was it easier than I thought, but it made a HUGE difference in the quality of my photos.

I recently got a Canon 300mm f2.8 lens (yes, this is the Big Daddy, but please don’t confuse it with the Bigger Daddy, the 400mm f2.8 lens). For a few years, I could only dream of having a lens like this, and believe me, the version I got, although it has Image Stablilization (IS), which I don’t use for action sports, is by no means a new lens. This lens is as old as my 20 year-old college student daughter! But these things are workhorses, and if you take care of them, they will definitely take care of you.

So like any giddy sports photographer with a new toy like this, the first thing I did was take it out on assignment. I had a softball game and two football games to shoot that week, and no time to break it in and learn the in’s & out’s. I’d even been warned from the guy I bought it from that it might take some time getting used to it. Bah! No time for that- I had sports to shoot.

The softball game went ok. It was sort of hit or miss with the sharpness of my images. I chalked that up to being unfamiliar with the lens, and also being as close as I was to the field- this lens was almost too much for that game.

Trying to make some quick adjustments, I tweaked a few settings, like the autofocus point pattern I was using, and errr, I didn’t realize that I’d accidentally turned on the IS feature (did I mention you shouldn’t use this for action sports?!). Turn it off.

I had two football games in the same night for my next assignment and no time to spend fiddling around making too many more adjustments. The first game went pretty well. I had good light for most of the first half, and got some decent photos. But the second game is where I realized that I needed to do the microadjustment. After that game, I spent some time looking at my photos, pixel-peeping them at 100% and closer. I suspected that my lens was back-focusing (this is where the focus is sharper a little behind where your target is.

I decided to dive in and tackle the microadjustment. In my case, I used a combination of the Canon EOS AF Microadjustment Guidebook and Jeffrey Friedl’s Testing SLR Autofocus article. I printed the test chart from Jeffrey Friedl and once I had the results, I used the Canon EOS AF Microadjustment Guidebook to make the adjustments in my camera.

UPDATE: Since writing this post, I started using the Reikan FoCal software for microadjustments. You install it on your computer (laptop works well), and then you connect your camera with a USB cable. It uses a test image (included) which you can tape to a wall and then the software then controls the camera and runs through a sequence of test shots and finally shows you the best setting for each lens (and focal length for zoom lenses).

The way this works, once you identify the issue you’re having, either front-focus or back-focus, you then edit a setting in your camera’s menu to identify the specific lens and enter its serial number so that the camera matches up with the specific lens. You can also set your camera to use the same adjustment for all lenses, but I decided to do them separately.
After making this adjustment, I was anxious to get back out there and shoot some more. I was amazed at the results! I saw an immediate difference in the sharpness of my photos, and my keeper rate went up tenfold. Now, I’m discarding more in-focus photos due to composition rather than blurriness. And I love this 300mm f2.8 lens!

Here are the details of the ‘Before & After’

Before


In this photo, I was focusing on the center snapping the ball. However, the lens focused on the left guard lineman next to him, a little farther back in the plane of focus. You can see this in the 1:1 zoom.
After the microadjustment was made, the spot I was focusing on was dead-on and I had many tack-sharp photos.

After


Of course, your mileage may vary, but I hope you have as good results as I did.

My first college football game

Posted on by gmsiegel

I recently had an opportunity to shoot my first college football game. This is just my second season shooting high school football, so I was excited for the chance to shoot at this higher level.

I didn’t really know what to expect. My biggest fear was not knowing the protocol- where I could and couldn’t shoot from on the sidelines, what kind of access I’d have on the field, etc.

I made sure to get to the stadium early to pickup my press pass and get settled into the press box. Most of my anxieties were squashed as soon as I met the Director of Sports Media Relations. He couldn’t have been nicer, and he answered all of my questions. I also met some of the team’s staff photographers, and they also went over some things to look for before and during the game. I was feeling better about things.

I like to be on the field about 30 minutes or so before a game starts. This gives me time to take some test shots, get my exposure settings right, and sort of feel out the atmosphere. I try to figure out where I want to be for the tunnel run, coin toss, and other pre-game stuff.

The weather wasn’t so good this night- it had been raining all day and the radar map didn’t show that it was going to let up. This meant I had to protect my gear, which makes shooting a little tougher since you can’t review shots as you go along as easily. Luckily, my deadline wasn’t until the next day, so I could just shoot away and review them all later.

Once the game started, I settled in, and after a few plays, it seemed to flow alot like the high school games I’ve shot. One difference about college vs high school sports is that they’re generally a little easier to shoot. The athletes are better, and the action is a little more predictable, which makes getting into position a little easier.

The game flow was good- both teams played pretty evenly through the first half. Luckily, I was in a good position for one of the home team’s scoring drives, and I was able to get a shot of a touchdown catch in the end zone, which made it onto the front page of the paper I was shooting for.

It was a great reward to be able to come away with something like that photo in the paper. I had a blast shooting my first college game and hope to be able to shoot some more this season.