The main application of professional sports photography is for editorial purposes; dedicated sports photographers usually work for newspapers, major wire agencies or dedicated sports magazines. However, sports photography is also used for advertising purposes both to build a brand and as well as to promote a sport in a way that cannot be accomplished by editorial means.
Getting to know your subjects is critical in capturing emotion. Effects and editing can only do so much for a photo. Understanding who athletes are by having a conversation with them can change your view on the person, making you a better photographer.
Knowing the game. Predicting what happens next in a sports game is critical in understanding how to compose your shot. The action moves fast so you take the time to prepare yourself before going out and taking photos.
Shutter speed is critical to catching motion, thus sports photography is often done in shutter priority mode or manual. A frequent goal is to capture an instant with minimal blur, in which case a minimal shutter speed is desired, but in other cases a slower shutter speed is used so that blur shows to capture the motion, not simply the instant. A particular technique is panning, where the camera uses an intermediate shutter speed and pans with the subject, yielding a relatively sharp subject and a background blurred in the direction of motion, yielding a sense of speed – compare speed lines.
ISO speed is often high (to allow faster shutter speeds) and may be left in auto.
Photos are often taken in burst mode to capture the best moment, sometimes in combination with JPEG rather than RAW shooting (JPEG files being smaller, these allow longer bursts).
While the vast majority of sports photography focuses on capturing a moment, possibly with some blur, the technique of strip photography is sometimes used to instead show motion over time. This is most prominent in a photo finish, but can also be used for other purposes, often yielding unusually distorted images.
Getting to know your subjects is critical in capturing emotion. Effects and editing can only do so much for a photo. Understanding who athletes are by having a conversation with them can change your view on the person, making you a better photographer.
Knowing the game. Predicting what happens next in a sports game is critical in understanding how to compose your shot. The action moves fast so you take the time to prepare yourself before going out and taking photos.
Shutter speed is critical to catching motion, thus sports photography is often done in shutter priority mode or manual. A frequent goal is to capture an instant with minimal blur, in which case a minimal shutter speed is desired, but in other cases a slower shutter speed is used so that blur shows to capture the motion, not simply the instant. A particular technique is panning, where the camera uses an intermediate shutter speed and pans with the subject, yielding a relatively sharp subject and a background blurred in the direction of motion, yielding a sense of speed – compare speed lines.
ISO speed is often high (to allow faster shutter speeds) and may be left in auto.
Photos are often taken in burst mode to capture the best moment, sometimes in combination with JPEG rather than RAW shooting (JPEG files being smaller, these allow longer bursts).
While the vast majority of sports photography focuses on capturing a moment, possibly with some blur, the technique of strip photography is sometimes used to instead show motion over time. This is most prominent in a photo finish, but can also be used for other purposes, often yielding unusually distorted images.
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