For sports photography, creating a plan helps to produce better images. Two essential parts of that plan involve the pre-pixel and post-pixel stages of digital photography workflow. The pre-pixel stage is what happens in photography before the image reaches your camera's digital sensor: lighting, camera exposure settings, and how you've set up the photo shoot overall.

The post-pixel stage involves everything that happens to the image after the sensor has converted light into bits-and-bytes: file formats, downloading files from camera to computer, processing and archiving images, and processing images with software, such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Microsoft Digital Image Pro, or ACD See. Finally, the post-pixel stage includes how your photos are distributed and presented, whether that's on the Web, in a slide show, or on paper.

In this chapter, you mostly explore the pre-pixel side of digital sports photography workflow, from preparing for the shoot to what you need to transfer your images to your computer to begin the post-pixel, digital stage. In Chapters 10 and 11, we get more into digital details as your photos are processed in the digital studio.

Digital sports photography differs from portraiture, commercial, wedding, and other types of photography is that only a small portion of images are posed or taken in controlled environment such as a studio By far, most of the photos you take will be on location, whether that's on a baseball field, in a sports hall, underwater, or on a ski slope. Rarely, unless you're a practicing pro photographer, will you be doing portraits of athletes in a studio.

What does this mean in terms of digital photography workflow? Primarily, it affects the pre-pixel stage when you're preparing for and executing your photography. This means you have to adapt to your environment, not the other way around. In a studio, you can control your lighting precisely, but you don't have this luxury when you're in the field.

Another aspect of sports photography, in terms of workflow, is that it's a one shot type of photography. Like wedding photography, you typically only get one chance to get the "money shot" In weddings, it's the kiss at the altar or several other key moments that cannot be replicated; in sports, it's the winning goal, the passionate defeat, or the tearful embrace of coach and player after a tough event. These are moments for which you must prepare and be ready, because if you don't get the shot you can't go back and do them again.

Now, realistically, if you're shooting pee-wee football and catching precious moments of your eight-year-old's athletic beginnings, the pressure isn't quite what it is if you're working for a sports news bureau taking shots of Wimbledon's top seed finishing off his opponent for the championship. You may just want to know how to get a good photo of your kid on the field and making it spectacular isn't necessary, but you still want it to be good. And, for most of you reading this book, that's probably the case However, if you're going to go to the effort of creating good photographs, you must practice digital photography workflow like the professional.

As you may have guessed, I'm biased toward the SLR type of camera. If you can afford a digital SLR, you won't regret having purchased one over a point-and-shoot camera if you intend to shoot anything more than family snapshots. These cameras operate much like their film ancestors; the Canon EOS camera controls, for example, are very similar in digital and film.

That said, I often travel with a Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera only because it's easy to pull it out and snap a quick photo when it's inconvenient to open a camera case, mount a lens, and go to the trouble of putting together an SLR But I wouldn't think of using a point-and-shoot for taking photos of fencing, even if I had nothing else to use. For my purposes as a pro photographer, it is simply not capable of producing usable images It can't produce images fast enough, it can't deal with poor lighting, and it doesn't have the lens(es) I need to get the majority of the shots.

When will a point-and-shoot camera work? If the sport is taking place in good light (outdoors, most likely), the action isn't high-speed, and you don't need to be too far away from the players. This sounds limiting, but it works for a few sports — especially if you're trying to get shots when it's not in the middle of action. For example, taking photos of equestrian riders before or after riding a course, capturing a skateboarder perched at the top of a half-pipe, or even taking a snapshot while hang gliding are all good uses for a point-and-shoot. In many cases, a point-and-shoot will be all you can take with you in an extreme sport such as sky diving, hang gliding, or rock climbing because you are so limited in how much you can carry in terms of weight and size constraints. In these cases, you will be best off setting your camera to manual settings, or at least shutter-speed priority, before jumping off the cliff or beginning your climb.

Part of the problem with point-and-shoot cameras is that they seldom offer usable manual controls, and these are really what you want to use when you're shooting sports Why? When a camera is operating automatically, it has to process the image it "sees" before shooting. It has to take a meter reading on the light and white balance, focus, and then set its lens, shutter, and sensor sensitivity (ISO) as correctly as it can before the photo can be taken. When a pro photographer shoots images, all these controls have been preset in a manual mode, so the camera doesn't have to think about anything — it just has to respond to the photographer pressing the shutter release. For high-speed sports, this capability is essential and makes all the difference in getting great shots.

The fastest cameras on the market today shoot at between eight and nine frames per second, assuming that the photographer has set the camera to a multi-shot setting and that the other controls are optimized. The better cameras have high buffer rates, meaning the camera continues to shoot at this rate until it hits the point where it can't hold any more photos in its internal memory without downloading images to the flash card — professional cameras such as the Canon 1D Mark II can buffer as many as 40 shots.

Consumer and semi-pro SLR cameras, such as the Canon Digital Rebel, the Nikon D-100, and the Olympus E1, are quite capable for most general purposes assuming that you're not shooting elite or pro sports With hot-shoe (external flash) support and a wide variety of lenses, they often can operate at two or more shots per second, which is a beginning-level of acceptable speed for most sports, and you have many manual controls, lots of settings for sensitivity and shutter speed, and the ability to use many types of lenses. These are all priced in the $1,000 range. For most amateur and enthusiast photographers, these are the cameras I recommend most often And camera prices are coming down all the time, with newer models of higher-end cameras available today at a fraction of the cost of their predecessors For SLRs, the real cost comes in what you spend on getting the lenses that you want — their prices change more slowly, and a fast lens (meaning a fixed aperture ability regardless of focal length) is always more expensive than a variable-aperture lens. Table 2-2 surveys some accessible and popular SLRs for digital sports photography.

The cameras listed in Table 2-2 are quite similar in their specifications; of course, you'll want to compare many more technicalities. I find retail Web sites such as B& H Photo (www.bhphotovideo.com) very reliable sources of features and specifications and an easier way to compare products, rather than going to individual manufacturer sites.

Most amateur and semi-pro photographers use zoom lenses for sports photography, primarily because they are versatile and you never really know where you can stand to get the best shots Pro photographers — especially for field sports such as football or soccer, where the plays can be very distant — most often use fixed lenses that don't zoom, such as a 400mm or 600mm "big glass". These very expensive (commonly $6,000 to $10,000 and more) lenses feature near-perfect optics, are huge (they usually require a monopod, which is a telescoping, single-leg version of a tripod that lets you steady a camera and hold it without strain), and get the very best shots But they're overkill for anything but elite and pro sports, and even then only for certain sports where distance is a factor.

Another factor in lenses is referred to as "fast glass." A "fast" lens means that its aperture (f-stop) remains fixed at any focal length. Less-expensive zoom lenses often have an aperture range depending on to what focal length they are set. For example, an inexpensive 70-200mm zoom may have a range of f/2.8-5.6, meaning that if you are shooting it a 70mm, you have a wide, f/2.8 aperture capable of shooting in lower light; however, if you zoom out to 200mm to get that distant shot, less light enters the lens and the aperture is capable of shooting only at f/5.6. This means that shots for which there's plenty of light at the 70mm setting can turn out underexposed at 200mm.

Fast lenses have a fixed f-stop rating, often such as f/2.8, which is large enough to accommodate most lower-light situations in sports halls and other venues. The f/2.8 setting can remain constant at any focal length; for example, I shoot a 70–200mm Canon EF L series lens that, because of its extremely complex internal optics, can shoot at f/2.8 no matter the focal length. This means that I can manually set the camera to the f/2.8 setting and know that whether I am shooting close-in or zoomed-out, the light entering the camera is the same.

As with big glass, fast glass comes at a cost; you will often pay $1,500 and well beyond for this feature.

When packing for your shoot, you want to think about how you can best access your lenses and flash cards and how you may be downloading images from flash cards. I favor the photojournalist-style fanny pack that lets me access everything right at my hip, and which zips open toward me (not away from me, as with most non-photographic packs). This way, I can easily interchange lenses, and there's room for my ImageTank portable hard drive so I can be downloading and storing flash cards wherever I go. Figure 2-2 shows my photojournalist fanny pack.

You may find a different way that suits your needs than what I describe, but photojournalists shooting at a wide variety of events have used fanny packs in this manner for a long time because they work well. Although many photographers also wear photographers' vests to carry equipment and other things, and these are required (and supplied) at some big sports events like the Olympic Games — primarily as a way of identifying photographers — they are less necessary in the digital world. In the days of film, photographers needed more pockets to carry a variety of types of film and to separate exposed from fresh film.

If you're going to shooting a sport in a specialized environment — sailing or rock climbing, for instance — you'll do more specific equipment preparation; sailing photographers, for example, quite commonly use a cooler on the boat to protect their equipment from the salt water but still have it accessible See the individual sports sections of this book to read more about these situations.

Figure 2-2. The camera fanny pack, like this one made by LowePro, is a staple component of the sports photographer, designed to support multiple lenses, flash cards, camera bodies, and portable hard drives all used on-the-fly without removing it from your hip.

For traveling, however, I carry my equipment in a rolling suitcase-style camera bag that holds more than I need on-site at the specific shoot. This case allows me to carry extra equipment, a backup camera, my charger, and even a small laptop in a protected case; it's perfect for taking all my equipment on a plane or in a car trunk. When I get to the shoot, I transfer just what I need to the fanny pack Figures 2-3 and 2-4 show a rolling, suitcase-style camera bag.

Perhaps the most important thing in preparing for the photo shoot is to understand as much as possible about the environment in which you'll be working. Ask yourself these questions as you are preparing for your sports shoot:

As much as possible, try to set your equipment ahead of time. Don't take lenses that you probably won't need; for example, if you're shooting in a small martial arts studio, you probably won't need a big telephoto lens. If you know that you'll be outdoors or indoors and you know the weather or the specific lighting, you can set your white balance accordingly.

Figure 2-3. You can transport equipment securely in many ways, including the rolling suitcase style case. This case, made by Tamrac, has been all over the world and has protected my gear like a charm.

Finally, one of the most important preparatory steps is to think about the specific photographs you want to take:

Figure 2-4. The Tamrac photo case, ready to roll off to the airport. Note how it is indistinguishable from an ordinary pieceof carry-on luggage.

The heat of the action is no time to be agonizing over the type of file format you'll use to capture photos. Nor is it the time to fidget around with your camera manual trying to find out how to change the file format to which your captured images are saved.

But file format is an important decision. Different file formats are more (or less) suitable for different final processing JPEGs, for instance, are a standard for online image display. TIFF is a long-time standard for many print processes. RAW photos capture more data and use more space on your memory card.

This list summarizes when to use what file format.

You may have to change file formats on-the-fly at the event, depending upon the conditions in which you're shooting and how the environment changes However, the more you can think about this ahead of time and prepare for the shoot, the better off you will find yourself when you get there.

The best scenario is if you have an assistant, friend, or family member willing to baby-sit your equipment while you move around; if you can engage them in helping to download images, all the better, as long as you can truly trust this person to safely and securely manage this step.

Here are some guidelines to follow when you are planning a shoot at a sports hall or on a playing field:

Assuming that you've scoped-out the area where you'll be shooting and you're comfortable that you have a safe spot where you can stage the day's activities, you can focus on some pre-pixel camera issues that are essential to getting good images.

If you've ever seen professional sports photographers or photojournalists at work, they often carry multiple cameras with different lenses, all preset and ready to go While not at every event, I carry more than one camera at the end of a world-level fencing finals, because inevitably the moment the final touch is scored, the house lights come up, teammates leap onto the stage, and the winner is tossed into the air Lighting, focal range, and other camera settings can change significantly in a minute or less, so shifting settings and lenses on one camera isn't practical.

In Figure 2-5, U. S. saber fencer Mariel Zagunis launches her gold medal — winning final assault on her opponent at the Athens Olympics In Figure 2-6, her teammates rush the stage to toss her in the air. In only a few moments, the change in lighting in the venue, the colors and reflection of additional clothing and bodies on the fencing strip, and the added ability to use a flash all contribute to very different settings for how a photo needs to be taken.

Figure 2-5. U.S. fencer Mariel Zagunis in her winning attack. The camera is set for high-speed, stop-action shots of a saber blade in motion, the lighting of the athlete and not the audience, and narrow depth of field.

Figure 2-6. Less than one minute after the image in Figure 2-5 was taken, teammates of Mariel Zagunis celebrate victory. The camera setting had to be changed to allow a deeper field of focus, and it did not have to fire at such as top-action speed (but it still had to be sufficiently fast to catch someone being tossed in the air!).

Use the following list to think through and prepare your camera to capture fast-moving images:

The Sound of Photography: Recording Image Sound Clips

As an alternative to keeping written notes about images, some cameras today offer the capability of recording a short sound clip in WAV format that accompanies a given image. You can select a specific image you've taken, press a button on the camera, and an internal microphone in the camera allows you record your voice. It's stored onto the flash card along with the image, and when you download the image to your software package, the sound clip goes along with it. Most software packages, including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and ACDSee all support audio annotation to image files. Some applications also let you add audio to an image file while editing the image, but you must have a microphone (and a sound card) on your PC to do so.

In Photoshop Elements, adding audio to an image is very easy. Here's how:

1. Using the Photo Browser, open a photo and click the Record Audio Caption button, which opens a small dialog box. Alternatively, you can select a photo, and then click in the Properties window. Under the General section, you can click the Add or Change Audio Caption button.

2. Click the Record button, and then speak into your microphone (you need to have one connected to your computer or one that's built in).

3. When you're finished, click Stop. Listen to the annotation by clicking play. Rerecord, if necessary. You can also attach an existing audio clip to your photo, using the File

   

4. Close the feature. The audio clip has been attached.

Attaching an audio file to an image in Photoshop Elements.

If your camera supports audio annotation, as the Canon 1D Mark II does, you want to test the capability before you use it in the field. The microphone may, for example, not record sound very well when you're in a noisy environment such as a stadium or sports hall, in which case you won't hear your recording later when you need to listen to the annotation. Also, you may need to be closer to or farther away from the microphone to get a good-quality recording, so knowing how it works ahead of time is a good idea.

Audio files can be a very efficient way of keeping quick notes of player names, events, stages of play (semi-final, final, and so on), or other information you'll want to know later on, as opposed to writing it down If someone else will be editing your images, this is also a good way of communicating to that person important information about the image that can be more effective than having him compare images with your handwritten notes (especially if your handwriting is as bad as mine!).

Before I share some tips on recovering from digital sports photo disasters, let me share some ideas on how to avoid them.

If you're careful, you can certainly prevent lots of problems, which is always best. The following list offers some suggestions that can help you do that:

You've done everything possible to prevent it, but the unthinkable still happens: The spilled drink, the dropped lens, the smashed camera. It happens when you're a sports photographer, and it's more likely than not that it will happen if you're carrying lots of stuff out-and-about. What next?

When my laptop took the liquid hit in London and ultimately died, it was diagnosed with a failed motherboard, which would cost more to fix than purchasing a new computer. Fortunately, I had obtained comprehensive insurance through the National Press Photographers' Association (contact them for coverage information at www.nppa.org), which provides photography-equipment coverage through a major insurance company. The policies, which vary in cost according to how much and what type of equipment you're insuring, covers literally any type of damage anywhere in the world. This is essential for a photographer such as I am, who's traveling all the time to shoots in locations such as Qatar, Cuba, Greece, Algeria, Vietnam, and Brazil Many photographers who have attempted to rely on their homeowners' insurance or automobile policies have been more than disappointed when trying to make claims for equipment loss or damage, especially when it has occurred in the field.

Obviously, if you're shooting with a camera that's $500 or less, then this type of insurance probably isn't necessary, especially given that most policies have a deductible of at least $500. However, if you're doing anything significant, no matter whether you're doing it professionally for a client or just for your own enjoyment, you'll want to invest in a policy for peace of mind wherever you may find yourself shooting.

As for dealing with disasters when they occur, repairing equipment in the field, for example, it is extremely difficult to undertake this yourself with the tiny, fragile parts and complex construction of today's computers and cameras. Even removing a keyboard key on a laptop can be challenging (but not as difficult as putting it back on!), and for the most part, we don't live in a do-it-yourself world anymore when it comes to photography. If you've spilled a liquid on your camera or laptop, follow these steps:

I've become very reliant on a portable hard drive called the ImageTank when I'm in the field. It is a very simple device with a slot for a flash card (as well as one for SmartMedia) and a couple of operation buttons. Containing a 20GB hard drive, which is all I need for several days of shooting, it has a simple LCD display that shows only that the device is on, a card has been inserted, and the data on it is being transferred to the hard drive Because it's so simple, the rechargeable battery lasts a very long time; it also runs on a 12-Volt DC cigarette-lighter connection or on 110-220 AC. When I'm back in my digital studio or in my hotel room, I simply connect it via a USB cable to my PC and back up the images.

Portable hard drives are probably the download device of choice for sports where staging a PC is difficult or impossible. They are light, portable, reliable, and easy to use wherever you may be. I typically store one in my camera fanny pack and download while I'm shooting.

Other types of portable devices exist, such as a portable CD burner that allows you to directly transfer flash cards to a CD all on one device. Although they're interesting, I have found CDs to be fragile enough, and subject to failure often enough, that I hesitate to fully trust this type of a download when I can't verify the CD in the field.

In my experience, the portable hard drives that tout all types of extras — especially image display windows — typically consume battery time far too quickly; they also are poor at displaying images with any speed, so the feature is only of limited use. Finally, the fewer the features, the less expensive the device is Simplicity reigns when storing images securely in the field! Figure 2-8 shows an ImageTank.

Figure 2-8. The ImageTank is one of the easiest and most reliable portable storage devices for Flash Cards on the market today.

Although many types of flash card readers that can be used with PCs are available in today's market, reliability among different PCs, readers, and flash cards continues to be somewhat challenging. The most common type of reader, shown in Figure 2-9, is attached to a cable with a USB connection. Once connected, it appears and is viewed just like a drive. These can be purchased for a variety of types of camera flash cards, and some readers support multiple card types. The other common type of reader is a PCMCIA or PC Card reader; this type of device can be inserted into the laptop "slot" on the side of the computer, and the flash card is inserted into it, as shown in Figure 2-10.

Figure 2-9. Attaching to your computer's USB or FireWire port, flash card readers like this one from SanDisk are a simple way to transfer images to your PC.

Figure 2-10. Designed for notebook and laptop computers, PCMCIA (PC Card) style readers allow you to attach a flash card by inserting the card into the reader, and the reader into card slot available on virtually all portable computers.

Always take a backup flash card reader into the field, just in case your primary one is lost or damaged or fails for some reason. Doing so has been a lifesaver for me on countless occasions.

The other factor that is important when downloading flash cards to your computer, or transferring files from your portable hard drive, is what application you'll use to move the files and store them on the PC. You can use any number of applications to do this, ranging from the tried-and-true Microsoft Windows Explorer window to applications such as ACDSee, which let you configure images as they are stored.

I actually use Windows Explorer commonly when transferring images, and I typically do not do anything with the images until they're safely on my PC hard drive. Follow these steps to save your image files to your PC via Windows Explorer:

ACDSee and Photoshop Elements also both include very good image-retrieval utilities, but I suggest that you keep it simple if you use them. You can easily and quickly download images, but you can create a problem just as fast. For applications that automatically transfer images from flash cards or drives to your PC, typically you have many options to configure, such as automatically renaming the files or moving them instead of copying, which means that, as the files are transferred, they are removed from the source device or card Moving files isn't the most prudent method, simply because if fate intervenes and anything interrupts the process, you're in danger of losing images Renaming images is relatively safe, but may slow down the transfer process Renaming usually is much faster when done to files already on your hard drive.

After your images are safely on your hard drive, you may want to immediately back them up by recording them to a CD or DVD or to another hard drive. Don't rename the files or change them in any way, especially if they are JPEG files. JPEG files are a lossy file format, which means that nearly anything you do to a JPEG file causes it to degrade by a fraction. When working with JPEGs, you should create archive files before working on any of the images. Basically, keep a copy of the original files; these are only for using as source files of which you can create copies. Store these in a very safe place!