Crucial Sports Photography Composition Tips
- What Is Sports Photography?
- Basic Sports Photography Tips
- Some Awesome Sports Photography Gear
- Implied Motion vs Motion in Sports Photography
- The Value of Negative Space
- Peak of Action = Decisive Moment
- Leading Lines in Sports Photography
- Will the Rule of Thirds Work for Sports Photography?
- Where to Go for Practicing Sports Photography
- Do’s and Don’ts of Low Angle Portrait Photography
- How To Use Leading Lines in Photography (with Examples)
- Essential Camera Accessories
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Sports photography is a fun genre to try. Similar to wildlife photography, we can use many of the same tips and gear for sports photography.
It may seem a little tricky at first to use composition tips in our sports photography, but it is surprisingly intuitive once you get started. Let’s see what sports photography tips and gear can assist in capturing great images.
Table of Contents:
What Is Sports Photography?
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As we hinted at in the opening of this discussion, sports photography is very similar to wildlife photography, a field of photography that many landscape and nature photographers lean towards naturally.
Many readers of this site are used to going out on a photo trek to capture a sweeping, majestic view of an area and also finding birds in flight or at rest, an elk or moose standing tall and proud, or a beautiful butterfly flitting between flowers.
In wildlife photography, some subjects are in motion, rapid or slower, and some are at rest. The same things happen with sports photography subjects. The subjects of both genres may be full of action, but they can also be stationary. The potential for action and movement is always present, even in a sleeping bobcat or a parked race car.
Basic Sports Photography Tips
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Some of the basic sports photography tips are deeply tied to motion. How are we showing or capturing the motion? Shutter speeds are an important tool for sports photography. A fast shutter speed can freeze motion, capturing details that zip by us as it’s happening. A slower shutter speed can actually show the action since it will blur the subject to a greater or lesser degree.
Panning with the action blends those two effects, keeping the subject relatively sharp and frozen in time while blurring or streaking the background. Panning with the action also helps set the subject off from a background that might otherwise be distracting.
Another helpful sports photography tip is using a wide aperture for selective focus. This will also separate the subject from distracting elements since they will be blurred out in the background or foreground.
Some Awesome Sports Photography Gear
Some specific sports photography gear is beneficial to capture amazing sports photography images. A fast lens, a camera with a continuous AF mode, and a portable camera mount come to mind.
Taking the portable camera mount first, the Octopad is an invaluable item to carry with us for sports photography, just as we would for nature and wildlife photography. Octopad is a disk of heavy-duty material with a ball head on top and a non-slip pad underneath. It can be put on virtually any type of surface, even if that surface is angled up to 45 degrees, giving you a sturdy platform.
That sturdy platform is handy when using techniques such as panning with the action. You want to stay flexible while steadying the camera, so its small size and light weight are helpful.
Since the included ball head mounts to a simple ¼-20 thread on the top side of the Octopad, you could switch it out with a pistol grip action head to make following any action easier. A quick-release plate is also a good idea, letting you quickly switch to handheld action photography.
A fast aperture lens, zoom or single focal length prime, gives you more options for adjusting shutter speeds and makes selective focus effects possible in more lighting conditions. Plus, the faster aperture lenses from most manufacturers tend to be more rugged professional-style lenses, which you will appreciate in the sometimes harsher conditions of sports photography.
Most digital cameras with interchangeable lenses have a continuous focus mode for autofocus while tracking a moving subject. The intermediate and prosumer-style cameras often have more AF points, faster AF, and more advanced features than entry-level cameras, which can be utilized for better sports photography.
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Implied Motion vs Motion in Sports Photography
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Sports photography is often filled with lots of action and motion. Capturing the motion by freezing movement or panning along with the movement results in great images. Sometimes, however, a subject can convey the action that’s about to happen, creating a very powerful image.
As an example, we may be at a track and field event. So much action and movement! Practice those panning and freezing movement techniques with the runners racing along the track or a pole vaulter soaring over the bar.
An image of a group of runners in the set position at the starting line projects an idea of a lot of action about to happen. The same thought works with that pole vaulter holding the pole and just about to start their lead-in run.
The subject is not moving, but the viewer of the images gets a very tangible feeling of the intense action that will happen next. That’s the difference between motion or action vs implied action. Both methods work well. Create a sequence of images using both techniques to give viewers the full experience.
The Value of Negative Space
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Negative space is an effective composition tool for sports photography, whether for implied or in-progress action. With the subject off-center in the composition, negative space tells the story of where they’re about to be or where they just were.
Combined with other sports photography techniques, such as panning with the action, we can leave a lot of negative space behind the subject with the blurred background becoming streaks of speed. Alternatively, we could use negative space in front of the subject, creating an image suggesting implied motion or upcoming action.
Peak of Action = Decisive Moment
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The decisive moment is a street photography term made popular by early masters such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, and Andre Kertesz. A decisive moment refers to capturing a unique and fleeting moment that exists for a brief instant of time. The term applies to sports photography in that the decisive moment is often the peak of action.
The peak of the action is seldom the fastest movement and is not always the end result or beginning of the action. Instead, more often than not, it’s that moment in time when one action stops, and another is about to begin.
For example, going back to that track and field event, the pole vaulter or high jumper has a peak of action at a decisive moment as they clear the bar. The upward movement of the athlete stops in midair right before the law of gravity brings them back down to Earth.
They are motionless for a moment between going up and coming down. That’s the peak of action, a decisive moment captured in time by your camera. There is no motion, but the subject is surrounded in time by all sorts of action.
This technique works with many other types of subjects in sports photography. A football pass play, the wind up of a baseball pitch or cricket bowler, a downhill skier turning on a slalom, and many other situations in all sorts of sports photography will work as the peak of action.
Leading Lines in Sports Photography
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The downhill skier on a mountain, a runner on an oval track, the catcher in a baseball diamond, and a football player on the sideline all have leading lines surrounding them. Whether capturing actual motion or implied motion, any of these leading lines can be incorporated into our sports photography.
Other leading lines ideas for sports photography could be the parts of a race car, the staggered lineup at the starting line of a relay race, a low-angle view of speed skaters or hockey players, the reins held by a jockey, and so on.
Will Rule of Thirds Work for Sports Photography?
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Most photographers automatically think of the Rule of Thirds when considering composition tips. Will this guideline work in sports photography? Absolutely! Sports photography of all types allows us to mix and match the rules of composition we already know.
Combining the rule of thirds with negative space, peak of action, selective focus, and creative exposure ideas can result in out-of-the-ordinary and creative compositions, giving us truly outstanding sports photography images.
Where to Go for Practicing Sports Photography
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Some of the best places for practicing our sports photography tips are right in our own backyards, figuratively and literally. A swingset for our child or a badminton or pickleball net stretched out in our yard can yield some great images.
Other local or nearby places could be a local high school or junior college with a football field, baseball diamond, or track and field pitch. Make sure you have permission if you try to be near the action.
A local public park might also have opportunities to practice our sports photography. Disk golf, pick-up touch football games, or people playing with their pets can all be used for capturing sports photography images. Again, for some of these, please be sure to get the subjects' permission.
Like wildlife photography, sports photography can be a lot of fun. It can also provide you with outstanding images you can enjoy, share with others, or market as stock photography. Just do it!