Do you shoot?

Hanging with a play after the whistle can lead to good emotion shots...keeping your camera up that extra five seconds can pay off big.

And yes, you can never shoot too many shots and you can never get too close to the action.

 

Those are great, but UMass plays football ?!?!?!

 

I'd have to start a prostitution ring like the guy in the other thread to afford good photography equipment

 

My girlfriend became a sports editor and photographer at age 21, without knowing anything about sports or photography. She dumped $1K into gear and shot until she could shoot no more. Now, less than two years later, she's a pretty good photojournalist well on her way to being a damn good one by just trying it and seeking advice from everywhere.

The concepts that have always eluded me are light and depth of field, so I obviously can't get past a rudimentary understanding of photography without them. From a designer/editor's perspective, I really like what you've already posted in terms of composition and moment-catching.

Here's a site you might want to check out, if you haven't already: http://www.sportsshooter.com/

 

I echo what UPChip said about shooting and taking notes becoming ingrained. Started shooting at my second shop, have ever since. Almost entirely self-taught, never took a class or anything. Learned from books, my mistakes and from other photographers. I've never been full-time at a "big" paper with a photographer-only position since I started doing photos in 1999. I use my own Nikon D1H and D70 plus my own lenses. I would love to have a D3 or even a D2Hs but that's not in the budget.
It takes a while to balance taking pics and notes at the same time, but you get used to it. The biggest thing is to get over the fear/mindset/whatever you want to call it that you can only do one or the other, and can't do both at the same time without producing crap. I will admit I'm not the best photographer, nor am I the best writer. But I can take pics good enough to fill a photo page (if we had the room) and at the same time I can crank out some quality stories. I don't say that to brag; I say that because with practice you can be good at both, even if you have to do both at the same time. It's definitely easier to be able to focus on just one, but it's not impossible to do both.
If you look around, you can get a used D1H for about $200, a 50/1.8 for $100 or so, a flash for $100 or less and a 70-300 zoom for probably $150 or so. Better equipment like a D3 and 80-200/2.8 costs more, but you can get a decent starter kit for pretty close to $500.

 

To me, shooting sports makes covering sports much better. There's no better way to get through a god-awful 26-22 girls basketball game than having photos to focus on. I can't fathom covering something like a cross-country race without having photos to worry about. Running around and finding spots with good light and a good background has got to be better than standing at the finish line with your thumb up your butt.

I use my own D700 and have a pretty nice collection of lenses, but it doesn't take the equipment I have to get workable shots. I did pretty well with a D70s before I upgraded. I shoot all my own stuff, and am sort of a backup photog for the rest of the paper. Probably 35-40 percent of my work now is photography.

 

This was one last summer before knowing how to work with curves by bringing out the blacks and whites.



And this one is probably one of my favorites ever as far as emotion goes:

 

racist.

 

Oh, and if you ever want to have some fun with Photoshop, take a photo that's a close-up and either blow the crap out of the shadows or have some fun using a high pass filter.

 

lol I felt that coming on.

 

Yes. Badly, but I'm slowly getting better. The only thing that saves me is I already knew when I started that I should take as many pictures as possible and sort them out later.