Tips for Taking Sports Photos

Look in magazines such as Sports Illustrated or ESPN The Magazine and you'll see amazing photographs; the agony of a quarterback caught in the middle of a sack, the concentrated face of a bicycle racer sprinting to the finish line, or the tight expression of a basketball player slam-dunking the ball.

It may look easy, but anyone who has brought a camera to a Little League game or a division playoff knows that taking great sports shots isn't so simple. The pros with the photographs we see in the magazine rely on years of experience and bags full of equipment to capture that perfect shot. But you don't need to bring more gear to a game than a football player in order to get a great shot. To get better sports photographs you just need to follow the same rules the pros use.

When it comes right down to it, every sport is about speed. Not all sports are as fast-paced as a basketball game, but they all center on motion, speed, and action. The key to sports photography is to know when and where the action is happening, and taking the picture at the right time.

Know the sport...
Before you can take great sports pictures, you have to understand the action involved. You need to know the basic rules of the game so you can figure out when the exciting moments will happen. In a soccer game there's usually a flurry of action in front of the net. In hockey the face-off can be exciting as two teams battle for control. In baseball, nothing beats a last-inning slide to home plate.

Making sure your camera is ready at the right time will go a long way to helping you capture that perfect shot. Many pros spend the whole game looking through their viewfinder. While it's not necessary to watch a whole game with one eye closed, it's a good idea to bring the camera up and look through it when exciting things start to happen.

It's also a great idea to walk around the sidelines, if possible, to get different angles, and remember to take a look at what's happening behind the action, too. Nothing ruins a nice action photo than something really distracting in the background.

Keeping your focus...
If you look at any great sports photograph you'll notice that some parts of the action are razor sharp, while other parts are blurry. This helps draw attention to the action, and make the background less noticeable. Photographers do this by changing the depth of field of a photograph. Depth of field is a complicated subject (and it really just means "how much of the photograph is in focus") so it might be easier to think of it in a practical way. Many cameras have a mode called "aperture control" (it's usually a setting with the letter "A"). The aperture is the opening in the camera that light comes through. Aperture numbers (often called f-stops) relate to changes in the depth of field.

When a camera is set to a low-numbered aperture (like 2.8 or 3.5) only the area where you focus will be sharp. Everything else will be blurry. Focus on a football player's head and a teammate right behind him will be out of focus. Set the aperture to a higher number (like 8 or 11) and not only will his teammate be in focus, but so will the crowd of people behind them sitting on the sidelines.

Sometimes you might want to make sure that only the star player is in focus (during his touchdown run for example) but some times you might want to see everything going on (like when the people in the stands are cheering). By changing the aperture you can control how your picture looks. Check out the manual that came with your camera to find out more about changing your aperture.

Making it blurry...
Sometimes though you might not want a sharp picture at all. Sometimes if you take a picture of a subject, the camera freezes in the action so well that you cannot see any motion at all. There are two easy ways to use a bit of blurriness to let people know how fast your sports hero is moving.

The first way to add a bit of intentional blur to your photographs is to change the camera's shutter speed. The shutter is a little flap inside the camera that opens and closes to let light get to the film or digital sensor, and that's how a camera takes a picture. Shutters can move very quickly, so a shutter could be open for a really, really short period of time or a really long period of time.

A shutter that's open for 1/1000 of a second (that's one thousand times shorter than a second) freezes motion in place because even the fastest athlete can't move very far in that time. A shutter that's open for 1/8 of a second, though, doesn't freeze the action as well because it is open long enough that when you start to take a picture the subject is in one place, but when you finish taking the picture.

With a slow shutter speed a moving racecar is blurry, a fastball pitcher's arm looks like a cool stream of lines, and surfers look like they are riding a wave made of ice. Varying the shutter speed can yield great results. Check your camera's manual to find out how to control the shutter speed.

Panning for gold...
Professional photographers don't just control the blur in their photographs, they also create some blur with a technique called panning. Panning's easy to do and the result can be very cool looking. Start by setting the camera's shutter speed to something slow, something like 1/15 of a second or slower, then start to follow your subject before you are ready to take the picture. Right before the action heats up, press the shutter and then follow the subject until the shutter closes.

For example, if you're photographing a track meet, look through the viewfinder and watch as the racers come toward you. As they get close to the finish, aim the camera at the chest of the lead racer. Push the shutter release and keep the camera pointed at the racer's chest while they keep running by. If you held the camera steady the racer would be blurry, but since you moved the camera at the same pace as the subject, you get a different image. The result will be a picture with a runner who is sharp, but everything else will be a neat motion blur.

Steady yourself...
When panning or using a slow shutter speed it's important to have a steady hand: leaving the shutter open for a long time allows the motion of the camera to affect the final picture. That's why sports photographers like to use tripods, or even monopods. A monopod is a like a walking stick that connects to the bottom of a camera, and allows you to steady it while you're shooting. They are a really great investment for anyone shooting sports pictures, and really can help improve the quality of a sports photographer's images.

Getting up close...
The final rule of sports photography is that often "closer is better." Some of the greatest sports photographs of all time have been of the faces of athletes, or of just a small part of the action. It's not just that athletes and their expressions are so interesting, it's also because most of us just get to watch a sporting event from the sidelines. By getting in close to the action we can make a photograph seem more interesting than the same event viewed from the bleachers.

Often it's hard to get close to an event (that's why professional photographers use very expensive lenses to take pictures from very far away) but many times it's possible to get right up to the action. Amateur events often allow people to stand up on the sidelines, and even some professional events have good areas where spectators can get up close and personal.

The great sports shot...
Getting a great sports photograph is a matter of timing, technique, and equipment. The best way to learn to take a great sports picture is to take lots and lots of photographs, and see how they look. Over time anyone can go from a sideline snapshot taker to a professional photographer. It just takes a little practice.