Demystifying sports photography

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Four + 1: Phil Oldham

As you wait for the new episode of BLFS, which shouldn’t be long, here is another Four + 1. Sixth time, it’s Phil Oldham from Manchester. Our paths crossed in Gdansk, Poland, a popular place for meeting sports photographers. We just finished shooting a match and we were both looking to get back to the city centre. Little did we know that there was no public transportation back to civilisation after 9PM in Poland. So we talked and walked until we realise there actually was a bus back to town. He’s a born and bred Mancunian and he’s a sports photographer as well as a nice dude. Just so you know, he just finished his thing at the Grand National and now he is a bit tired.

If you want to see more Phil, check out this site: http://www.purpleclouds.co.uk/

1. How did you start shooting sports photography and what is your bread and butter sport?

I was working in a studio in Manchester doing your family portraits and the like, when the guy who owned it asked if I fancied lending a hand by photographing some youth karate over a weekend. I didn’t have anything on and thought it’d be a change, so agreed. I haven’t looked back since! My bread and butter sport, living in the north of England is football (or soccer if you’re funny!). Though depending on the time of year I also do plenty of rugby league, rugby union and cricket.

2. What is something that you think is really obvious now that took you a long time to get?

The best pictures aren’t always the sharpest, nor the ones with the best bokeh. The best pictures are the ones that tell a story. I always strive for quality, but in a media scrum at a cup final or relegation battle content rules.

3. Funniest / Strangest story from one of your shoots?

Every day has it’s own story, though one always stands out in my mind. British Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington had just pretty much secured her place in the squad for the 2012 games and I had ran to send pictures of the race, not realising that they were skipping straight to the medal ceremony. I overheard the announcement on the PA system and ran back poolside. I arrived a little flustered and out of breath to be greeted by her saying to me in front of numerous colleagues, “oh, thank you for showing up!” We had a laugh about it but it was quite embarrassing!

4. Advices to the kids (or a mid life crisis sufferer) who are aspiring to become a sports photographer?

Start small. Too many people in Britain buy all the gear yet have no idea! Shoot local teams, local sports. When you feel confident enough try and sell pictures to your local publications.. it will be hard work in these tough financial times but if you can’t earn some cash with little to no competition then you won’t have much chance at the top. Being a photographer is as much about the business as it as about taking pictures and it’s important to learn that from day one. From there, just keep on snapping and as the saying goes, the cream always rises to the top!

+1 Curry or football. What is more popular in Manchester and why?

Curry unites our beautiful city and football deeply divides it! As to which is more popular.. well, you can’t go to a match without something spicy afterwards to debate the days events over! Since Sheikh Mansour bought Manchester City, football has definitely taken precedence as they compete with Manchester United on a more even footing. This season has seen them playing cat and mouse in the chase for the Premier League title and it looks like it will go down to the big Manchester derby at the end of the season. That ninety minutes alone has had fans arguing since the season’s start last August!

Posted by  |  2012/04/15 | Categories: Four + 1, Phil Oldham | Leave A Comment »

Ryu: One body army

Morning. I’m sitting in a laundromat, near my new home in Berlin. I apologise for the delay in getting this post up, it’s just that I just moved house and as you may know, it’s not easy moving from one country to another whilst going on assignments. Of course, Matt will never miss a beat if he was in a similar predicament, but I’m more frail and sensitive to changing circumstances than he. But now that I live in a house with no furniture and no internet, it is back to regularly schedule programming.

Whilst I was on the move from Paris to Berlin, I had some people come and take our stuff to our new pad as we didn’t want to do it ourselves. As you might have expected from me by now, I made a grave error in that I let them take my camera bag as well. Although my baby is back in my hands now, the day after the movers came I was slated to goto Nice to shoot the figure skating world championship. With no camera, with no lens, with no nothing, I was stuck.

I made a desperate visit to my local NPS in Paris and as usual they came through in style. They lent me a body (D3s) and 3 lenses (200-400mm f4, 70-200mm f2.8, 16-35mm f4). But unfortunately, I was left with only one body. Which means I had to figure out how I would shoot a 4 day competition with just one body. This meant that I was in a similar predicament to some of you out there, who must face the one body and maybe one lens problem. Here are few things I noticed which might help you realise that the simple life isn’t all that bad.

1. Plan, plan, plan
As I keep on saying the same thing over and over and over, I will keep on saying it over and over and over. Plan ahead. If you know which sport you are shooting, then you should know which lens works best. If I’m shooting basketball and if I’m only allowed to bring one lens, I will choose the 70-200mm f2.8. For me, it’s the most versatile for this sport and I can get most of the shots I want for the action closest to me. On the other hand, if I’m shooting football, I will go with the 400mm f2.8. The reason for this is that even though the action will “spill” out of the frame when it’s too close, I’m certain to get most of the stuff I want, including the celebrations after the goal on my end.

At the figure skating world championship (henceforth knowns as “FSWC” as I don’t want to write it again), I used the 200-400mm f2.8 for the majority of the time. Yes, pity me. From my previous knowledge of the sport, I knew that this lens would allow me to get most of the shots I wanted (close ups from rink side and ice as background from the stands). Although there were moments of “I wish I could quickly change it to a wide angle”, unless I wanted a very specific shot, me and my 200-400mm f4 were attached to the strap.

2. Force this issue
Since you’ve only got one body, you really want to stick with one lens for the majority of the sport that you are shooting. The reason for this is that whilst you change from one lens to another, you might miss a shot. Other reasons are that with only one lens on the body, you will learn how to forcefully get the shot you want with that lens. When you have too many options, you become too dependent on situational lens swapping. Especially if you are hoping to break the mould of your current shooting style, learn to shoot differently with what you have. The first logical step is to try to get closer or further away from the action. You might find that shooting a step closer will net you a shot you never thought possible and the same goes for stepping back a step.

At the FSWC, I shot mostly at 400mm. The reason for this is that I learned quite quickly the AF speed on this lens is not as fast as 400mm f2.8 in low light indoor situation. Rather than having to fiddle with the zoom ring and trying to minimise the fuss, I decided that 400mm was the focal length I will stick with unless the situation demanded that I concoct an alternative. For example, instead of moving the zoom to 200mm when the skaters got close to me on rink side, I shot with the 400mm. If I had the 70-200mm or 14-24mm with a body on my other hand, I would have swapped it, but I went with the 400mm throughout. The results were 50 / 50, but I got shots I couldn’t have gotten with a wider lens.

3. Be foolish
Your decision to stick with one body and one lens does get old. No matter how you shoot and no matter where you shoot from, you’ll need to think of something else to do as there is only so much one can do with a simple setup of one lens one body. May I suggest a bit of blur practice? Low shutter speed will get you some blur magic going and this is something you’ll need a lot of practice to get it right. Even if you are good at it, it is not an exact science and therefore it requires you to shoot often. In any case, try the blur in different shutter speed. Start with 1/15 and go all the way down to a full 1 second. This will not be easy to do outdoors during the day, but depending on how sunny it is, you can go blurry throughout the game.

Once again at the FSWC, I got bored after 1 hour of shooting. My colleague, who I shall not remain nameless (Tsutomu Takasu from Four + 1) is a genius when it comes to the blur. We will get him on again on BLFS very soon to give us more tips on advanced blurring. I digress. He gave me a short lesson in blurring that I hadn’t thought about and off I went on a blurring spree. Combined with my thirst for multiple exposure (thanks Matt), I made things interesting switching techniques depending on my mood. Although, I have to admit that you shouldn’t mix blur and multiple exposure. With all things good for us sports photographers, it’s sometimes wiser to leave these two beauties on separate corners.

There you have it. I survived the 4 days of staying true to one lover. Although at times I definitely thought we were spending way too much time together, the occasional foray into the uchartered territory made our relationship worth our while. But if you ask me again, I prefer menage a trois. :)

Ryu, not apologising for being pervy at the end.

Posted by  |  2012/04/07 | Categories: Figure Skating, Ryu | 2 Comments »

Four + 1: Al Golub

Number five in our Four + 1 series is my good friend Al Golub, coming to us from the Sierra-Nevada foothills of California. You can find Al on his website and Twitter. A former Chief Photographer and Director of Photography at the Modesto (CA) Bee, Al has pictures spanning decades and continues to shoot NFL football, California’s wildfires, and more. He also has the distinction of being among the very few people who can talk down Angry Matt, having accomplished this feat on a few occasions. His dedication to passing along the knowledge he has accumulated is one of the reasons I joined Big Lens Fast Shutter.

1. How did you start shooting sports photography and what is your bread and butter sport?

Like many photojournalists I was a high school newspaper and yearbook photographer. Starting with my first football game I was hooked on sports photography. Football was my favorite and remains to this day, I am still covering 49ers and Raiders after all these years because of that excitement I learned in high school. Photography has never been a job to me, it has always been a passion that drives me to photograph.

2. What is something that you think is really obvious now that took you a long time to get?

I was so focused on getting the peak action that I forgot to photograph the reaction after the peak action. I worked out a little mantra to myself “ action reaction”. I repeated action-reaction, action-reaction and so on. It seemed to do the trick but I would say it out loud in the beginning causing my fellow photographer to tell me to shut up.

3. Funniest/Strangest story from on of your shoots?

My first football game I photograph was in fall of 1958. It was my first time using a 4×5 Speed-Graphic and of course we made several test in my backyard at night.

Things like cocking the shutter and pulling out the slide then remembering to flip the slide to black before removing the film holder weighed heavy on my mind along with the weight of the Honeywell 208b strobe unit that slowed down everything. Well to the punch line, I didn’t know anything about the wire sports finder or how it worked. I used the optical viewfinder during the game. Like the mirror on your car thing may appear further than they really are. I discovered this when a ball carrier came around my side of the field as I was trying to compose by filling the viewfinder. I looked up after the shot and fell backwards as the players rolled over my feet. My dad got to use his favorite joke as he yelled to me from somewhere down the sidelines, “Come over here kid and I will pick you up!” Dad and the Denver Post photojournalist came over to check me out. The Post photographer said “Hey kid you need to learn how to used the sports finder”; he also gave me a quick lesson in how to Near-Far focus the Speed-Graphic and use the wire sports finder. I got a great image but I decided to be more aware of my surrounding and stay clear of running football players.

4. Advice to kids (or a midlife crisis sufferer) who are aspiring to become a sports photographer?

Advice to aspiring sport photographers:
Minimum requirement is to be an excellent photographer. Know your equipment and software in and out. Talent is only the first step. The most successful photographers have learned how to promote themselves and keep good relationship with others; you must know what you are getting into. Having a good working knowledge of your chosen sport and continuing to build on that knowledge is very important. You need to know what you want to accomplish and stick to it. Have a long-term and short-term goal, along with an exit plan. A career in photography is not for the faint hearted. It is difficult to make it in an industry that requires expensive equipment to make minimal money.

To deal with midlife crisis or burnout, you must got back to the basics of why you became a sports photographer and what you planned to accomplish? The bigger questions “are you happy” and do you feel a sense of accomplishment me every time you photograph are important. The quality of any photograph is directly proportional to the energy and attitude of the photographer. Enthusiasm and positive mind set makes for great images. To me, photography is never a job it is my passion and way of life. Because photography is part of me, I am just as enthusiastic about photographing a simple assignment like dog of the week as photographing more complicated assignment like the Super-Bowl. You need to approach every opportunity to photograph with an open mind or you won’t see that great image.

+1 You’re in the middle of a massive film-scanning project (years work of 49ers pictures). What have you learned, and what is your goal with this project?

I am about three quarters the way through scanning 20 years of 49ers and Raiders film. I hope to be finish by the end of March. I have already made 3,000 scans which produced 2600 final color corrected and captioned digital files. It is an all-encompassing time consuming project. My short-term goal is to get all 32 years of my bay area NFL images on PhotoShelter. It should end up about 5,000 images or so. My long-term goal is to get all of my editorial and art type images on to PhotoShelter.

I learned how to organize, research, and establish a workflow for this type of project. You have to stay on task; while I am writing this note I have two scanners going on in the background. I am in the middle of 1997. My blog on hold but when I finish, I will blog about how I went about getting this done. If you would like to see what I have completed so far check out my PhotoShelter NFL gallery page.

Posted by  |  2012/03/23 | Categories: Al Golub, Four + 1 | Leave A Comment »

Matt: Make the Pictures You Can Make

The question comes up pretty often: I don’t have long lenses, and I can’t get close enough to the action, so how can I make better pictures? Long lenses are prohibitively expensive if you’re not shooting professionally, and field sports often have a lot of action that takes place out of range. So your choices come down to waiting for the action to come right to you and making far fewer pictures, shoot everything and crop like mad, or concentrate on finding the pictures that you can make with the gear and access that you have.

When I was first getting into photography, the longest lens I had was a 70-200. I shot for a soccer team, and did a lot of wishing that the action would come to me, and a lot of time not shooting when the action was too far away. One thing a lot of people in the BLFS group on Flickr (and people in general) don’t get is that shooting with a relatively short lens and cropping 90% of the picture out is always going to look like crap. Always. You won’t have the detail, and you won’t be able to isolate the action from the background. Because of this, until I got a 300 and then a 400, my choice was always patience.

But let’s say that you shoot your kids, and they play once a week, and not even for the whole game. If you wait for a close action picture, you might not get many/any pictures at all. Well, think about what your goal is. Is it to flex your photographic muscles by getting peak action moments no matter the subject? Or is it to document memories? One thing I did to make money to buy my long lenses was to shoot pictures of kids for holidays etc. But not at Sears, my business was for in-home pictures, kind of a photojournalistic take on kid photography. My pitch was basically “kids never pose in real life, so why do you want to have a wall of posed pictures. When they’re at home, kids play. When they’re at soccer/little league games, they mess around with their friends, put on and take off gear, cry, laugh, cheer, and more. When they are grown up, I promise you that they will value a picture of them laughing with their friends at halftime over a 10% crop of a picture of them kicking a ball on the other side of the field.

We see generic action pictures coming into the Flickr group every day. And I think of all the access wasted in favor of generic action. Sometimes there are rules even for youth games, but I don’t imagine anyone is having too much of a problem getting into practices.

Here’s a recent Reuters Photographers’ blog post on British Olympic diving hopefuls by Stefan Wermuth. Note how many of these are from practice. Wermuth couldn’t have gone back to his editors with 100 competition dive pictures and hoped to keep his job. So he watched and made decisions about what training to be a diver is really about. And if you were one of the girls in the last frame, honestly wouldn’t you rather have that picture to remember your time as a diver? Unless you go on to hoist a gold medal, I’m going to say yes.

There are great pictures out there that don’t require $30,000 worth of gear, credentials, a fancy job title or anything else. Just your imagination, and the guts to do something other than standing on the sideline with a 70-200 letting other parents gawk at “how big your lens is”.

Posted by  |  2012/03/21 | Categories: How to Practise, Matt, Technique | 2 Comments »

Four + 1: Gene Lower

Our 4th Four + 1, coming to us from Phoenix is Arizona Cardinals team photographer Gene Lower.  Gene’s portfolio and very impressive client list can be found here.

1. How did you start shooting sports photography and what is your bread and butter sport?

I was an athlete up through my college years and was lucky enough to have my photo appear many times in local papers. When my career ended, I wanted to still be involved in the sports world and I remembered all the great shots that were captured of me during my career. Indeed, I wanted to do the same. Now, besides many other great athletes, I have been able to document Larry Fitzgerald’s entire professional career. My bread and butter sport is definitely football. I am the team photographer for the Arizona Cardinals covering all of their home and away games. I also serve at the lead photographer for the Fiesta Bowl Committee – covering both the Insight Bowl and Fiesta Bowl – and every four years the BCS National Championship Game.

2. What is something that you think is really obvious now that took you a long time to get?

The most obvious thing to me now is the simple fact that it is one thing to be able to capture a great photo – it is another to be able to market and sell it. Patience is definitely a virtue in this media world. Just because an image is not relevant now doesn’t mean it will not be in the future. My most famous photo, the iconic shot of Pat Tillman, for years remained in my personal collection without any views from the public. Now as a Sports Illustrated famous cover, it is the most known image of him, a huge honor!

3.Funniest / Strangest story from one of your shoots?

Not one particular moment stands out for me – there have been many. But I always get a laugh when the players want to take control of my camera. The 400 2.8 looks big in my arms, but it looks like a point and shoot with some players, in particular the defensive line. On quite a few occasions I have been forced into becoming the model.

4. Advice to the kids (or a mid life crisis sufferer) who are aspiring to become a sports photographer?

Although it has been said many times – I must re-emphasize – KEEP SHOOTING! With every opportunity try something new and create a style unique to you. Shoot at different focal lengths and different angles -look for fresh ideas. I also feel it is very important to archive your work. As I mentioned earlier, you never know when an image may become relevant. In this fast paced media world, if you lose time searching for an image, your opportunity may be lost.

+1 As a team photographer, what is the difference in your job between when the team is winning vs when it is losing?

There is definitely a difference on how I cover the Cardinals dependent on the play on the field. After a loss I try and back off – capturing the moment from a distance – giving the players their space. Wins are great; I usually go inside the bench area during the last two minutes and find the players celebrating. With a big win I cover the postgame locker room speech. Needless to say, I have documented and been a part of many special moments with the organization – particularly our run to the Super Bowl a few years back.

Posted by  |  2012/03/14 | Categories: Four + 1, Gene Lower | Leave A Comment »

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