Sport photography

A brief introduction

The national rugby team greeted by the Irish president Michael D Higgins (Canon 1DIII with EF 70-200 at 200mm)

To me, sport photography means capturing the action. Of course, there are other subjects, except the action, that can be part of this group but I’m not going into that now. There are few things that somebody new to the subject have to know.

Rugby league: Ireland vs France (Canon 5DII with EF 24-70 at 24mm)

1. Know the rules of the game. Most of action sports are team sports and most of them are played with a ball. There are individual ones too, like skying, tennis, ice skating, etc and they also have rules. When I say know the rules, I mean knowing only the general rules. You will be a photographer not a referee. Knowing the rules will help you understand what is the next move, where the ball is going to be and that is where the action is going to happen

Polo: Pegus vs LHK (Canon 1DXII with EF 300 at 300mm)

2. In all the action sports, everything is happening fast. That means, as a photographer, you have to be ready for this, you have to move fast and most important, you need to have the right equipment: a camera with a fast shutter speed and lots of frames per second. In sports like football/soccer, rugby, athletics, the athletes are running; faster than them are the cyclist and the horse riders and in motorsports things happen even faster. In all those sports, everything is happening faster than a second and your camera has to be able to capture that. Frames per second is the nature of the game.

Boxing (Canon 5DII with EF 17-40 at 40mm)

3. Your camera has to be able to cope with the weather and light conditions. During the day, a pitch might be half in the sunlight, half in the shadow, during the evening/night, under the floodlights a high ISO is required.

National Women’s League Raheny UTD vs Shamrock Rovers (Canon 1DIII with EF 400 at 400mm)

4. Not all the action is happening close to you. In all cases, during a match, photographers are not allowed on the pitch. Taking this in consideration, you need a telephoto lens capable to bring the action close to you. Sometimes the action is coming close and, in this case the telephoto lens won’t help; it is time to use a normal or a wide-angle lens. The best solution (if can afford) is to have two cameras with two different lenses, one for each situation.

Hurling (Canon 5DII with EF 70-200 at 200mm)

5. Respect! Have respect for other photographers, for the players, athletes, referees and club patrons. Don’t get in their way!

At small local community clubs, after scoring a try, sometimes players likes to show-off. That is me capturing the moment while my friend Peter, from the other corner of the pitch, captured me.

This was just a brief introduction on the subject. If anyone is interested in founding out more, leave a comment or contact me on the chat, I will open a new thread.