The following was submitted by one of our readers Alejandro Zarate. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on if you agree?
When I got my start in sports photography a few months ago, I had no prior experience shooting sports. Since I had less than a week to learn (and no opportunity to practice), I freaked out and read up as many online tutorials as I could, both in Digital Photography School and elsewhere. As it turns out, that was completely unnecessary - I should have just re-read my photography library, and consciously break every rule.
Seriously. The "rules" of photography are just about the worst way to shoot sports, so you would do well to consciously avoid them. Not convinced? Here's a list of rules & guidelines you should avoid following:
It's all about the equipment
A big pet peeve among photographers is being complimented on our cameras, rather than our abilities. And rightly so, since the biggest factor behind making good photographs is the photographer's skill, not their camera. But it doesn't really work that way in sports.
Sure, you need skill to make a good sports photo - lots of it. But the fact is, without good equipment, you're doomed to failure. You can't even think of shooting most sports without a DSLR. And really, an entry-level DSLR isn't what you're ideally looking for - you need a good continuous shooting (burst) mode, a fast and reliable AF system, good high-ISO performance and a sturdy shutter mechanism which can withstand the wear and tear of several thousands shots a month. A wide lens selection will come in handy if you want to shoot different sports, too.
And while we're talking about lenses... your 18-55 kit lens won't cut it most of the time. If you're shooting indoor sports like basketball or volleyball, you'll need a fast prime with a max aperture of 1.8 or 1.4, ideally. If you're shooting outdoors sports like football, soccer or field hockey, you'll need a long telephoto - ideally a fast one in order to get minimal depth of field. And don't forget a moderate wide angle lens for team shots - in a 1.6 crop body (which is better than full-frame for sports, in my opinion) your 50mm prime will be too narrow for a picture of a complete team. Fast focusing is a great asset for sports lenses. Stabilization, not so much - you'll be shooting at fast shutter speeds which you can easily handhold, so there's no point in paying for a feature that won't be used much, if at all. If you have money to burn, buy a faster lens - like a 70-200 f/2.8 instead of a stabilized 70-200 f/4-
That said, you CAN shoot sports with a beginner DSLR, a nifty-fifty for indoor games and a 75-300 to use outdoors. But if you're anything like me, you'll feel that your creativity is being limited by your gear. And keep in mind that even if you can afford all the expensive equipment listed above, your skill as a photographer isn't irrelevant: you need BOTH gear and technique to achieve good sports pictures.
Technical perfection is overrated
If you're the kind of photographer who obsesses about perfect focus and exposure in every picture, prepare for your expectations to suffer. Sports photography is about doing your best in bad conditions. Sometimes you'll capture great dramatic moments only to see your focus was a bit off. Or your great action shots will turn out to have unexpectedly bad backgrounds. Or maybe you'll see some motion blur just because the dark gym you're shooting in won't allow any shutter speeds faster than 1/320.
Just deal with it. Your shots aren't going to be technically perfect most of the time. Barring a total catastrophe, don't worry if your most compelling pictures aren't perfect. Correct what you can in postproduction, and relax about what you can't. Most sports photos are displayed as low-resolution web JPEGs or printed on newsprint - hardly the best media to appreciate technical minutiae. Unsurprisingly, most professional sports photographers use cropped-sensor cameras with low pixel counts (at least, when compared to other pro cameras) but insanely fast AF and continuous shooting. And news agencies' images aren't often 25 MP RAW or TIFF files, but far smaller JPEGs. Most of the time, composition trumps technical merit.
Quantity does equal quality
Serious photographers believe compulsive overshooting doesn't lead to better photos. But when it comes to sports, you NEED to shoot the same action as many times as possible. Your camera includes a burst mode for a reason (remember untruth #1?). To capture peak action in a play, you need to start shooting before the decisive moment, and end the burst after the action has finished. Sometimes, you may start shooting a burst in advance of an opportunity that never realizes itself. That's just normal. In a typical sports assignment, one or two photos are published out of several hundreds shot. Thankfully, digital memory is cheap enough for this to be of no issue.
That said, there IS such a thing as overshooting. For example, some plays may be happening too far from you to realistically fill the frame - even after cropping. Forget about it - you're just making post-processing a lot more tedious.
Previsualization is for landscapes
Ansel Adams popularized the idea of 'previsualization', the technique behind seeing the finished picture in the mind's eye. Ansel would create his desired image before even setting up his camera. He definitely never shot a basketball game.
In sports photography, your aim is to capture action which is unfolding before your eyes. Don't think like an artist, think like an angler: you choose your equipment and position, and wait for action to move into your frame. Then you react instinctively, not rationally. If you think too much, you'll lose the shot. And you don't get to choose what kind of action you capture - you can merely influence it with your previous choices (like position and focal length), but you still depend on your subject to do something interesting.
Composition: Forget thirds
It's often said that following the rule of thirds makes for a more dynamic composition. I find it to be a great rule - as long as the subject has about as much movement as a bowl of bananas. When dealing with fast action, I find that following the rule of thirds hurts more than it helps. Firstly, because if you're taking the time to think about subject placement, you're not being fast enough. In second place, the most typical sports scenes don't lend themselves well to thirds: a single player placed on a vertical thirds' line on a horizontal frame often looks unbalanced, and two-player conflict takes up most of the available space. In vertical frames, the issue isn't as much thirds lines but moving space, and you can even ignore that if you crop close enough.
In any case, you don't need to create dynamism and tension when shooting sports. They're best conveyed by subject matter, not formal composition.
Fill the frame, but not the viewfinder
The other big rule of composition, filling the frame, is alive and well in sports photography. One of the big draws of sports photography is bringing the viewer close to the action in ways impossible to the naked eye. However, that doesn't mean that the frame has to be the size of your camera's sensor. I find I get the best results when leaving some cropping space.
A big problem with some sports is fast and unpredictable action. Giving your subjects some space in the viewfinder means you won't have the problem of them running out of the frame. A close crop on the viewfinder means you can get a masterpiece - or a horrific mess of cropped-out heads or feet. I find my best shots come with a small margin - 10 to 20% of the image area. Sometimes I'll crop out as much as 50% of the original image in order to get a passable picture out of an otherwise useless shot.
Yes, you will lose some image quality. Don't worry too much about image quality - again, it's not the most important element in sports photography. Most of the time, better composition in exchange for image quality is a good deal. Just don't overdo it.
Forget about shooting RAW
Many hobbyist photographers are in love with RAW. It's understandable: greater bit-depth than JPEGs, no compression artifacts, the possibility of tweaking exposure and white balance in post-production... RAW is great when you're creating art. But when it comes to sports photography, forget about it. The only thing you'll achieve shooting RAW files will be crippling your burst mode while filling up your memory card much faster. Plus, it'll take longer to post process every shot - not such a good idea if your intention is getting those photos published and you have a deadline to meet.
Go with JPEG all the way. You'll get far better photos shooting JPEGs at twice the frame rate you can manage in RAW. If you're worried about not getting your exposure and white balance correct, just fire a couple test shots before the match and check your LCD. And if lighting conditions change unexpectedly, you can still correct exposure and white balance in post-processing using curves and levels. And remember - the media most commonly used to display sports photos is far more forgiving than fine art prints.
Conclusion
This post isn't meant to be taken as dogma - quite the contrary. I firmly believe photography is about results, not processes, so if you find other ways to achieve good sports photographs then by all means use them. I'm just sharing what works for me, but if your preferred method to capture sports images is meditating for half an hour and then exposing a single frame using a disposable film camera in order to later cross-process the negative, I'd love to read about it in the comments.