Making good sport photos :)

Always though this was a good start.

http://www.sportsshooter.com/news_story.html?id=1127 (for photos that go with the story)

What's the secret handshake?
Becoming a SportsShooter.com member only requires good images. Handshake optional.

By Brad Mangin, SportsShooter.com


Clean Backgrounds
Please pay attention to your backgrounds. Be aware of the cars, chain-linked fences, distracting advertisements, really awful bright white blobs, cheering parents, hot dog vendors, lighting fixtures, stray dogs, piles of uncollected trash, etc.

If you are at an event, actually take the time to look at the background through your lens – if it is filled with clutter, do something about it.

Move around. Find another shooting location that will give you a cleaner background. Try and shoot backlit so your background becomes the backlit trees – which will go dark-green or black.

If there is not a good background available from any position, try looking for an up position to shoot from. Shooting from overhead is cool because the ground becomes your background - that can mean a solid brown background (infield dirt in baseball) or a solid green background in football or baseball.

Also - the longer the lens you use the cleaner your backgrounds will be. Shooting baseball or football with a 70-200 zoom at f/11 will most likely result in really cluttered, very sharp and detailed awful backgrounds because there is too much depth of field.

Shooting with a 400mm or 600mm lens wide open (at f/2.8 or 4) will really help to clean up your backgrounds by throwing them drastically out of focus (which is a good thing) - thus making your main subject pop out and make the picture more pleasing to look at and easier to read.


Cropping Effectively

Crop your images as tight as possible. This helps to simplify the image and help the reader understand the real point of the image. Crop in as tight as you can without cutting off any limbs, if possible.

If your image is already very tight try and make sure you are not cutting off any arms or legs at the joints - this makes for an awkward crop and makes the picture hard to look at.

Do not have pictures with too many athletes in them - unless the image is a cool and moody scene-setter. Use a longer lens to get closer to the action- this will make your images much better.

Remember – it is essential that your images be simple and clutter-free. Use cropping to help keep things simple and clean. That guy standing in the background, eating a tray of nachos – you might want to crop him out.


Focus, Focus, Focus
Your images need to be tack-sharp. There is no such thing as "kinda sharp" or "pretty sharp" or "almost in focus". It's either IN or it's OUT.

No one wants to see an image that is not in focus. If it isn't sharp don't show it. Pretty simple rule.

With today's autofocus cameras it is much easier to make sharp pictures than it used to be. Editors will not accept images that are not sharp, so you should definitely not include any out of focus images on your SportsShooter.com member page. Please make sure your images are in focus.

Also, please don't think that an out of focus image can be "saved" back in the computer later. Although use of the "Unsharp Mask" tool is important, and gentle use of it can help your images, it still can't "save" an out of focus image. Extreme overuse of it will only make it look like you're trying to save an out of focus image.


High Image Quality
Make sure your images are properly toned and processed.

Make sure your monitor is calibrated and not too light/too dark. I used to have a monitor that was dark but I didn't know it. All of my images looked good on my screen but when other people saw them on their computers there was no black at all - thus the images looked absolutely terrible - all washed out and flat.


Also make sure your images don't have any weird color casts. You don't want all your pictures to have a nasty cyan or magenta cast. Your images should contain whites, blacks, and a wide range of colors in between. The images you show in your member page should also look similar in terms of color balance and sharpness.

Why? Because picture editors are looking at more that just your image. They're looking at how you tone, if you're able to detect major color shifts, and if you're skilled in the use of an image editing program. When your images are all over the spectrum (some are flat, some are contrasty, some have a green cast, some have a blue cast) they will be less likely to give you an assignment because they'll feel unsure of what you're going to end up sending them in the end. Will it have a color cast? Will it be flat?

Showing that you have a set of standards for yourself, and that you're predictable and you are in complete control of your camera/scanner/computer, and that you pay attention to details, and that all of your images have a similar "look" to them will result in you getting more assignments from more picture editors.


Excellent Image Selection and Editing
Universal Photo Fact #1: Photographers are their own worst editors.

You may have included some images that aren't as good as you think they are. It may be a painful process, but we, an outside party looking at your images, may feel that you should edit out or replace something.

That image of yours that you've fallen in love with because it was "really hard to get" or that you "went through a lot to get it" may not register with everyone else. Although it may be an accomplishment on your end to have pulled off this image, it may not belong in a collection of your life's best work.

A good rule of thumb is to look at some of the other members and get a good feel for the general level of quality of the images on the site, and work to match and/or exceed that level. Sometimes it's as simple as cropping better.

If you've submitted pictures of a sporting event taken from the stands with your 50mm lens, we're officially telling you now: This will not help you.

Pictures shot from the stands with an underpowered lens are obvious, and not the kind of images that are considered "professionally acceptable". That means we'll think twice about activating your membership to this site if we see these kinds of images in your gallery. A word of advice: Don't include pictures shot from the stands in your member gallery.