When I'm taking lots of photographs at an event, especially where conditions are changing and I don't have the luxury of checking all my exposures in detail, I often shoot dark. That means I adjust the image down a "stop" or two, such as shooting at f/5.6 instead of f/3.5. Why? If I'm uncertain about an exposure, I always prefer a bit of a darker, underexposed image than one that is overexposed. If an image is too light, it's often impossible to add information; conversely, if an image is underexposed, typically it's possible to remove information by lightening the image, often revealing a perfectly exposed photo. The following series of figures demonstrate images that were overexposed, underexposed, and adjusted from being underexposed.

Figure 3-1, which is obviously overexposed, was taken a very slow shutter speed. And, it is so overexposed that the image is far beyond rescue — there is literally no digital information with which to work, it is blurry, and has almost taken on an artistically abstract effect. Had the image been shot at a shutter speed of at least 1/200, there might have been hope for using it if was a critical shot. Optimally, it should have been shot at 1/400 or 1/500 of a second.

Figure 3-1. This overexposed shot of fencers was taken at 1/12 of a second at ISO 400 and an aperture of f/208.

Figure 3-2 is underexposed. Because the light on the fencing strip varied from very bright to slightly dark, I chose to keep the camera set at my typical, one-stop-down setting of 1/400, ISO 500, and f/2.8.

Figure 3-2. This image of men's epee fencers on the final strip at a Grand Prix in Doha, Qatar, is slightly dark with the fencers' jackets obviously not as white as they should be, which was intentional.

Figure 3-3 shows the same image from Figure 3-2. Using the Levels control in Photoshop, I was able to improve the contrast and color — something I would not have been able to do had I overexposed the image as in Figure 3-2. As long your images are underexposed by only one f-stop and not much more, they should be highly editable.

Using the stop down method, you have a starting point from which you know you have a good exposure. Jot down the setting in a pocket notepad; you can also check the information setting by viewing an image displayed on your LCD. If I have changed my settings by choice or by accident, this lets me refer back to an image I took earlier on the same flash card to see where it was set. It's not uncommon when you're shooting in the field to inadvertently change a setting when you're shooting in manual mode — which is also why it's a good idea to check your LCD image preview on occasion (but not obsessively).

Figure 3-3. Slightly edited using the Levels control in Photoshop, Figure 3-2 was improved.

If areas of the field of play differ in terms of light, or if you'll have different lighting challenges during the event, then you should be prepared to shoot them with the appropriate settings. Figure 3-4, is an action tennis shot taken in bright, direct, midday sunlight — one of the hardest types of light in which to shoot. If you shoot too dark, the features in the person's face will all but disappear; if you shoot too light, you won't have any detail. Plus, with an action shot such as this one, you have to shoot with a fast shutter speed so that nothing is blurred.

I want to continue with the tennis track, thanks to Amber's action photo, and ask you to think about shooting a regional tennis match. You may want to put together a cheat sheet with notes that look something like Table 3-1 after you have a chance to check your settings. The settings here are primarily for SLR owners, and I've added suggested point-and-shoot settings as well (remember, your camera may differ according to the light, the venue, and other factors).

Figure 3-4. A dramatic action tennis shot by photographer Amber Palmer taken in harsh sunlight: © Amber Palmer

Obviously, these are examples and not absolute settings for you to shoot a tournament, but it gives you an idea of the variations of lenses and settings for an event. With practice, you won't need the cheat sheet; you'll simply know what settings will work best for what you're shooting. However, until then, you may save yourself from missing a few important shots by keeping this type of information. Furthermore, if you shoot in the same venue again, you won't have to recheck if you keep this information handy.

There are many manufacturers of lenses that work with various camera types. Often, lenses such as Tamron or Sigma are significantly less expensive than a lens made by, say, Canon or Nikon.

Although these lenses may be perfectly good lenses, you want to test them with your camera to ensure that they focus as quickly as original equipment and that they are accurate. I've tested some aftermarket lenses that appeared to provide incredible speed for the price; however, several of these lenses shot images that were notably softer even when shooting exactly the same image at the same settings On the other hand, I've had several aftermarket lenses I've used that have been excellent quality. One of my favorites, which I still use, is the Tamron 17-24mm wide-angle lens.

If you're using a point-and-shoot camera, chances are good that you don't have the option of changing lenses; these cameras almost always come with a single lens that offers limited zooming capabilities. However, if you are considering a new camera or just want to better understand what your camera is capable of, this section ought to be very enlightening.

The optics in a point-and-shoot camera are probably the single-most important feature you want to consider when you buy one. No matter what whiz-bang features the camera may offer electronically, the bottom line is that an image is going to pass through the lens directly to the electronic sensor. How good the optics are determine show good your photo is more than anything else.

Most point-and-shoot cameras offer the ability to zoom optically or digitally. An optical zoom means that the glass in the lens is physically shifting to change the focal distance of the camera and shift from a wider to a more telephoto view or vice versa. When a digital zoom "zooms in," the camera simply crops some of the photo so that a smaller area is captured; in other words, a smaller amount of data is taken in by the sensor. You have a smaller photo, and you can't enlarge it to the full extent that you could with an optical zoom — at least not without losing image quality.

Some digital point-and-shoot cameras, such as Sony's Cyber-Shot models, attempt to use technology to overcome this limitation by using the full size of the sensor, but the result is still inferior to that of using glass to zoom. Camera companies resort to digital zooms because the technology takes up less space than providing lenses capable of broad-spectrum zooms, thus making the cameras bulkier than their marketing research tells them they should be to appeal to a size-conscious consumer base.

The bottom line is that if you're going to buy a point-and-shoot camera, look for the best possible optical range and size; typically larger cameras with bigger lenses mean better images (not a universal rule, but a place to begin). Certain companies, such as Canon, Nikon, and Olympus, also are known for superior optics as opposed to companies that come from more of a video or technology/computer orientation. Olympus, in particular, produces optics of very good quality because that was what the company primarily produced in its earliest days.

For shooting sports especially, you'll greatly appreciate a camera with superior optics. The ability to focus (manually and automatically) quickly and accurately, to be big enough to let in enough light, a large enough image that you can really capture what you see, and an optical zoom range broad enough to handle various distances inherent to sports are all important factors to consider.

Good composition in sports photography means being able to see the action before and while it's happening, along with having a sense of what makes a good photo in general. Composition is a long and well-addressed topic in photography; entire books are dedicated to the topic.

Perhaps the most important factor in sports photography composition is being able to focus on a subject. If someone viewing the photo isn't sure what it is centered on — for example, if the photo contains just a group of players on a field, randomly placed — the photo is not meaningful or interesting. When a group of people isn't posing and the photos are candid, it's essential that you pick a subject for each shot — a central point in your image around which everything else revolves.

A sports subject may be an individual player alone, two players, where one or both of them is the subject, a single player running for a touchdown amidst a sea of other players, a sailboat tacking in front of another, or a race car in the process of overtaking another on a track. In any event, the photo is focused on something specifically happening in the scene.

This isn't to say that your subject is always in the center of the photo She may be off to the side as a ball flies toward her racquet, or he may a crashing surfer at the bottom of a towering wave. Yet the person viewing the photo is drawn to the subject because you intended it to be so when you took the shot or when you adjusted the photo in post-production.

In fact, you may have a photo that isn't very focused in terms of a subject. Sometimes, you can fix this later by cropping the photo to emphasize a part of the image that then becomes the subject and eliminates any confusion as to what the viewer is looking at. At other times, you may see something that requires you to adjust how you're shooting in order to capture a subject. Figure 3-11 shows a large group of Olympic fans in Athens, but it's not very interesting However, by turning on the flash and singling out an individual fan — in this case, a Polish man who had even painted his face in his national colors — the shot suddenly became far more interesting, and it's still obvious he's in a big crowd, as shown in Figure 3-12.

This isn't to say that a well-composed photo with a subject must be a tight image of just one person; it may be a wide shot of a large space Because we're talking about sports crowd shots, look at two photos of the opening ceremonies from the Olympic Games. In Figure 3-13, you can see the Icelandic performer Bjork on the far left of the image spreading her gown across the tops of all the athletes in a stadium of 70,000 people.

Figure 3-11. In this crowd shot, there doesn't seem to be a single focal point.

Figure 3-12. By singling out an overzealous fan, the shot becomes more interesting.

Figure 3-13. Icelandic singer Bjork is the subject of the image, yet she's not in a close up and not even in the center of the photo.

In Figure 3-14, the center of the image is the just-lit Olympic flame and the final Olympic torch carrier, seen below as the flame rises into its permanent spot.

Figure 3-14. The relationship between the flame and the torchbearer is clearly the subject in the midst of a massive crowd of onlookers.

The rule of thirds

A classic method for composing photographs is known as the rule of thirds, meaning that any photograph is divided among a tic-tac-toe-style grid of four lines forming nine squares.

In Figure 3-15, photographer Neal Thatcher's spectacular shot of an extreme snowboarder in Canada's Blackcomb Mountain nicely represents the rule of thirds. The image is divided into a grid of nine squares. Top to bottom, one third of the image is the sky, one third is the sky with the subject (the snowboarder), and one third is the trees and snow.

The subject would be far less dramatic without the sky above and trees and slope below. The other parts of the image serve to emphasize the athlete and how high he is; in some cases, the empty space will make the subject look higher than he actually is.

Also, although the subject is roughly centered amidst the nine-square grid, this certainly isn't always the case using the rule of thirds However, in this image, it works very well, and the composition is nearly perfect.

That said, one of the things to remember about the rule of thirds is that it is a rule made to be broken. Photographers are always working with the thirds in creative ways, consciously and subconsciously. They may put the subject at the top, or they may flow action from left to right or bottom to top. However, they are almost always working with the simple rule of thirds in mind; making this a habit helps to ensure that images are more likely to be well composed from the beginning and yet have a tremendous amount of creative leeway. For example, in Figure 3-13, the performer Bjork is in the bottom, left-hand side of the image, but she could be considered the focal point; this is but one example of how the rule of thirds can be applied creatively.

Figure 3-15. The left and right thirds are the sky, trees, and snow, sandwiching the last third of the boarder in the middle.: © Neal Thatcher

The best action shots aren't just the classic poses and typical images that everyone expects to see. Look for interesting perspectives, angles, and expressions — the more original, the better.

My work as a fencing photographer became successful as a result of thinking not of the classical fencing move, but rather what would look exciting to people who may not know what fencing was all about. Fencing is a sport rife with passion and exhilaration, athletes ripping their masks off and screaming out a victory cry, leapinghigh into the air with gymnastic talent to achieve a single touch, but the images portraying it lacked energy, motion, and excitement. So I set out to change that and ultimately changed how the sport has been portrayed.

Look for key moments in any given sport. Such a moment may very well occur when it's expected, such as a baseball player sliding into a base, a goalie missing a ball as it goes into the net, or a rider poised atop a horse jumping a tall set of poles. However, it may also be something different as well: a swimmer's body as he does a kick-turn, a close-up of a hockey player's face riddled with intensity, or a coach's hopeful look as her gymnast completes a routine for a gold medal.

Action doesn't always mean conflict, a player in motion, or a ball in the air. It can mean a player just after a particularly difficult or successful move or before it — such as a baseball player poised for a hit. All these either directly show or imply action, and they can piece together a story about the athlete, how a sport is being played, or what that sport is all about.

Getting a good angle is key to being able to take sports photos. As a photographer at sporting events, you are often in a privileged group and can often perch somewhere that others cannot — even if you're doing it as an amateur. Consideration is frequently given to someone with a camera, no matter who he is, and it's up to you to take the opportunity. Don't assume that you won't be allowed to get close to the action just because you're not an official. This is definitely one pursuit where it's often easier to "ask forgiveness rather than permission." Photojournalists are notorious for getting themselves into spots no one ever thought they could and dealing with the consequences later.

But you must do this diplomatically and quietly, and you must behave according to acceptable standards. Ata U.S. national fencing tournament a few years ago, I saw a parent get into a near fistfight with a coach over a camera. The parent wanted to shoot video of his son fencing an important elimination bout and was getting in the line of sight of the coach, who insisted that the parent get out of the way. The bout between the coach and parent became more heated than the one on the fencing strip, and the referee at one point had to stop the fencers because of the distraction on the sidelines.

Who was right? Without question, it was the coach. A coach or other official always has the right to the sporting field over anyone from the media, family members, or anyone else who stands to get in the way.

Look for angles that give an unusual perspective of the sport, in addition to common or familiar ones. Perhaps you can get above the action or shoot it from floor-level by lying on the ground. Climb up into the stands, get where other people may not be, and explore close ups and distance shots from each spot. Find out what works and what doesn't. This is what ultimately yields some of the best photos you can ever take.

Don't be afraid to shoot tight, closing in on an athlete's face or body. However, these should be only a part of your entire set of photos; just having tight shots — even good ones — isn't sufficient to get a full picture of an entire event any more than just having big, wide-angle shots.

Some of the most dramatic angles in sports require you to get into an uncomfortable or special position; they may even require special equipment or be risky, including these spots:

The photo in Figure 3-16 was taken of a desert four-wheeling Land Cruiser in the Saudi Arabian desert in Qatar. The driver took me on a different route through sand dunes so I could get a better view of the other vehicles as they barreled down a dangerously steep slope.

The tendency of many photographers who are looking at a sport for the first time through a viewfinder is to shoot it straight on, as you would watch it from the stands. This can be difficult, however, because athletes are often moving around, and a position that's 90 degrees or perpendicular to the line of action can be limiting in terms of your ability to focus on a maximum range of play, and it consequently reduces the number of usable shots you can take. Instead, poising yourself between 30 and 45 degrees from the center line of the action can yield the best results in action sports such as tennis, football, baseball, soccer, and others. After you establish a baseline of shots from these angles, you can begin to explore other perspectives to creatively fill in the story you're trying to tell.

In Figure 3-17, you can see optimal positioning based on this method. If you're shooting at a fast shutter speed with a narrow depth-of-field aperture, the 30 to 45 degree method is the most forgiving and gives you the widest range of focal accuracy. Furthermore, it gives you a perspective of the players, the action, and an opportunity to capture both close and wide-angle shots.

Figure 3-16. A desert race captured from the most dramatic vantage point

Figure 3-17. Diagram of positioning yourself to the action

Still photography tells a story, and it may be in a single shot or a series of them. Think about what you're doing at an event, no matter what type of sport you're shooting. Are you trying to emphasize the drama of the sport or the technical demands? Are you showing the abilities of one athlete in particular, even if it's your son or daughter, or are you trying to show a wide range of players? How can you personalize a sport where you can't really see athletes' faces because they're wearing helmets, masks, or goggles?

The person viewing the photo doesn't necessarily have to see the entire set of images from the event to get a story out of it; you may very well be publishing an image that will be accompanied by a caption. Or perhaps you plan to put together a slide show that gives you the opportunity to present a sequence of action and events. What you intend to do with the photos may very well have an impact on what types of photos you take and how many of them you shoot. If you're waiting just for a couple of key moments where a player has a dramatic move or response to something happening, then you can focus just on that and work with close-ups to ensure that you catch the shot. On the other hand, if you need to show scores, interaction, movement, and other elements of a sport, then you need to take lots of photos from as many perspectives as you can locate.

Here are some thoughts about how you tell a story when shooting sports:

As you develop your sports-shooting skills, you'll find certain shots that you are especially good at, as well as ones you like to take more than others. This may be because you find that you have an eye for certain angles or images, or perhaps because you know a sport well and can anticipate action that other photographers seem to have a hard time getting.

As a photojournalist, I spent much time shooting people and faces, sometimes in difficult or challenging situations. I also have shot many images around the world and have found that I really love photographing people in all walks of life — many times when they weren't necessarily looking at me or even realizing that they were being photographed, which gave me a documentary style of photography. I very much enjoyed shooting in this manner, and it ultimately paid off in my sports and portrait work, and much of my sports work features faces of athletes as much as it does athletic action.

Figures 3-18, 3-19, and 3-20 give a sense of some of the elements of my own style.

Figure 3-18. A narrow depth-of-field photo captures Sheikh Saoud Al-Thani, prince of Qatar and vice president of the Asian Olympic Council, watching a fencing final in Athens. Behind and to the left is Monaco's Prince Albert.

Figure 3-19. International Italian fencing star Valentina Vezalli cries out in victory.

Your specialty may be something entirely different. You may be adept at catching special aspects of a sport, and you may favor a certain angle over another. For example, you may love getting surfers inside a curling wave or skiers holding an extreme edge as they carve around a racing pole. You may find that you're especially good at shooting wide-angle shots of two football teams grappling with each other over a ball.

Whatever it is, it's important to be aware that you either have or will have a style that is distinctly yours, and that is a signature type of image you create just as a painter or a musician can be identified by a certain brush stroke or tonality on an instrument Over time, people will begin to identify, critique, appreciate, and recognize you for this style as it develops and is cultivated.

Figure 3-20. U.S. saber gold medallist Mariel Zagunis and silver medallist Sada Jacobson pose for their medals — the first gold medal for the United States in 100 years of Olympic fencing.

In photography, a good exposure is as important as, and often related to, good composition. It means that every part of your subject can be seen clearly and is in focus, and that there aren't areas that are overexposed or underexposed unless it is obviously intentional.

For example, you may shoot a baseball player's face in a split, meaning one side of his face is illuminated by the sun, and the other side is in shadow, which creates a dramatic effect. A good exposure takes into account all parts of the image: the main subject, the background, the light and the direction in which it is being cast, and areas of focus, as well as those that are blurred or obscured.

As a sports photographer, chances are good that you won't be posing many photos unless you decide to "go pro" and start shooting team and player shots on a regular basis. Still, it's good to know a little about posing athletes, so you may find these hints helpful, even for a family snapshot:

Be creative! Don't be afraid to take some fun photos of the group as well as formal, posed shots.

In Figure 3-21, Olympic fencing referees are posing with the fencing federation officials at the main venue in Athens. The background, with the Olympic fencing symbol, makes for an interesting backdrop as opposed to merely having everyone sit in the stands. Note how the group was arranged in a semicircular fashion; I was limited on available benches and had to improvise with a mix of standing and sitting. I probably should have had the gentleman on the far right pocket his handkerchief, however!

Figure 3-21. Olympic referees pose with international fencing federation officials in a formal shot.

In Figure 3-22, a model poses for a shot that I use as a primary image for marketing materials for FencingPhotos.com. I was careful to have her hold the fencing foil correctly — something that athletic clients are especially aware of — and to make sure the foil wasn't brand, spanking new (that makes it look too posed!). The image was shot in RAW for a broad range of color and tonal definition (which is explained in more detail in the next section).

Figure 3-22. A fencing model poses for a glamour shot.