Matt Stephens
Well-Known Member
HandsomeHarley said:Only when I have to, and since they traded the broken "good" office camera for a point-n-shoot with no manual focus, I refuse to shoot sports.
As far as your pics above, they're all right to begin with, but one thing I learned when shooting and placing photos is this (don't ever forget it): "Real people doing real things."
Otherwise, shoot the "standing still" shots to have something to fall back on, but begin to challenge yourself. One thing I do/did, in shooting baseball or softball, for instance, is focus the camera on a base and then shoot like hell as a runner is moving to that base. Shooting the pitcher is another easy one, because they don't move from your frame much, so you can manual focus on the mound/circle (Please, DO NOT EVER CALL IT A MOUND IN SOFTBALL).
Football, volleyball and basketball? I leave those to the pros. Volleyball is doable, just focus the camera on the setter or server and hope for the best.
I'm with ya on basketball. It can be hard as hell, especially since some arenas are so darn dark that you have to turn your ISO up to 3200 (depending on what lens you have, that is). The best hoops shots I got this year were at the Sprint Center in KC due to lighting:

And I agree about using standing still as a backup. I feel at football practice, it's much harder to get action stuff due to how many people are out there on the field making the background a distraction. These are some of my better football shots (quality is crap because I'm copying from facebook right now):





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