Creating dynamic shots

Occasionally I write photo blogs that nobody reads giving my advice on how to take better sports photos. Here is another one. This time I will be talking about basketball and wrestling because I shot a basketball game last night and a wrestling meet a few days ago and found a few shots I want to share.

Now this won't help most people who can't get down on the court or mat to get close to the action because my advice depends on getting as close as you can without getting hit by a ball, a player or a ref. And I've been hit by 2 of the 3 more than once (football and basketball, almost got nailed by wrestlers on more than one occasion.

So here we go...

Fairbury highschool varsity girls against Aurora

I shot the above picture with my Canon T3, yes I said T3 with a 20mm wide angle lens with the camera body resting on the floor pointing up. I had to shoot blind obviously because I wasn't going to lie on the floor to frame the shot.

After 2 years of shooting basketball I can usually frame the shot pretty well by pointing in the general direction of the action. The wide angle lens is very forgiving. I shot this at F3.5 at 400 shutter speed. That's about the fastest shutter speed I can use in a gym and get well lit photos.

Here is a link to the complete photo set.

Fairbury Jeffs boys varsity against Aurora 

Here is another example of the same technique. If you get lucky, you can get a shot that makes the players look like they can jump to the moon. Here is a link to the boys set.

I'm sure when people see me squatting down and resting the camera on the floor they think I'm nuts but this is what you get when you try something different. I do the same sort of thing with my wrestling shots.

I rarely shoot wrestling from anything higher than waist level. I think wrestling looks much better shot from below.

In the last two examples I used a 200mm telephoto lens which I just started using for wrestling. I didn't think it would work since I was so close to the action to start with, but I can get some amazing head shots using it.

Here are a few more examples of shots taken from the mat, and I mean the camera touching the mat pointing up.

I'm adding this last shot because it's cool... Shot from waist level with a 50 mm lens at shutter speed 500.

So in conclusion, if you want you pictures to stand out, you have to shoot them differently from how everyone else is shooting them. If you stand around and take snap shots, your pictures will look like snap shots. If you put some effort into them, they will pop.

I think most journalists shoot for the paycheck and as long as they get something to publish and make the editor happy, that's fine. To me that's not good enough.

KT