Shooting Sports Action

by William Lulow

Back in the 1980s, I photographed quite a few LPGA golf tournaments. I was usually shooting for the sponsors, so I had a chance to be there for the whole tournament. Many sports photographers working for publications like Sports Illustrated, usually just show up for the final round to capture the athletes who were in contention to win because it constituted “news.” That was their job and they didn’t much care how they got the shots they needed. I got my taste of “reportage” or “journalistic” photography and decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do. But, I did learn a lot about what getting good action shots required.

Photographing sports action successfully usually requires several things:

• First is a knowledge of the sport you intend to cover.
• Second is knowledge of your camera enough to be able to record action in “burst” mode.
• Third is knowledge of fast shutter speeds and how to adjust other settings to allow their use.
• Fourth is having an idea about the kind of image or images you wish to make.

You need a good knowledge of the sport so that you can anticipate movement and action sequences. This will also enable you to be in the right spot on the field, court, ice or in an arena so that you will be in position to get the images you want. Knowing what players will do under a variety of circumstances, allows you to get into the right positions with enough time to adjust your settings BEFORE the action happens. A familiarity with the teams and players also helps because you already know their style and you may even have an idea in mind of the kind of image you want.

When you are trying to capture sports action, you need to be aware of the settings on your camera that will enable you to record it as it plays out in front of you. The correct choice of lenses is important as well. Most sports require photographers to be on the sidelines or in other positions that might be some distance from the action such as press boxes. So, long telephoto lenses are usually required. If you are in a stadium with controlled seating and multiple tiers in the stands, a lens in the 500-600mm variety would be necessary. If you are allowed on the sidelines or a photographer’s box courtside or in a hockey arena, a shorter lens could be used, perhaps something in the 85mm-135mm variety.

In the days of film, you would have needed a camera with a motor drive which would enable short bursts of images in order to capture the movement. Now, it is fairly easy to set your digital camera to record multiple frames at a time. This enables the photographer to photograph a sequence of actions, then pick the one most wanted.

Here is an example of an image that was made using this technique:

Made with late afternoon light conditions, camera set on high speed mode. Exposure was f/11, 1/1250th of a second with ISO set on 1600, with my Canon 135mm f/2 lens.

This is the kind of action shot possible with modern DSLR cameras.

Here are some older images made with film when I was covering tournaments for the LPGA. Most of these images were made with my Nikon 200mm f/4 lens, most of the time, used wide open :

Nancy Lopez, in the early 1980s.

These were made without a motordrive but with a knowledge of the sport and an anticipation of what kinds of action I wanted to capture. Results today with high speed capability with most digital cameras, are much better.

This image was made with my Canon 135mm f/2 lens, ISO 4000, f/2.8 @ 1/1000th of a second. The camera was set for rapid high speed multiple exposures.

Here’s one made to capture the blur of a hockey player speeding down the ice:

So the secret to getting these kinds of results is to know the sport you wish to photograph so that you can anticipate the moves of the athletes. If you are shooting to document the action, you will need a very fast shutter speed which will then dictate the other parameters of your exposure. This is important because you are making the decision to stop the action with a shutter speed of around 1/750th – 1/1000th of a second. These days, if you pay attention to the “Triangle of Exposure”, you will have to increase your ISO settings in order to shoot with good depth-of-field, but you also may want to limit the depth-of-field to render crowds, for instance, out of focus. You may not be able to set up a tripod, so a monopod is a handy accessory to have, if you are shooting in low-light situations. Otherwise, the shutter speed should take care of any blur you might encounter. In the above image of the hockey player the blur was intentional, created by a slow shutter speed and camera movement.

These days, digital camera sensors are so good that very high ISO settings like 4000 or even 8000 still yield acceptable results.