Need Feedback on photos

becauseofanangel

We have organized all our photos on smugmug this summer. We are selling a lot and donating all money to charity. Could you please look at some of the sports photos and offer feedback as to how I can improve ( www.becauseofanangelphotography.com ). Thanks all feedback is appreciated.

johng

Just a suggestion - typically if you post some photos rather than just a link to the whole gallery you'll get better response from people. If you can't pick 10 or less photos that represent your work that's the first thing you need to improve - identifying your marketable work. Looking forward to seeing your stuff

goldenstarphoto

becauseofanangel wrote:

We have organized all our photos on smugmug this summer. We are selling a lot and donating all money to charity. Could you please look at some of the sports photos and offer feedback as to how I can improve ( www.becauseofanangelphotography.com ). Thanks all feedback is appreciated.

First of all let me say your story on your homepage really touched me. I am sorry for your loss. You are doing a great thing by donating your sales to the youth football organization.

As far as the photos....you have some very good ones. My only suggestion would be to focus a little more on individual players. I see a lot of group shots with a lot of backs and helmets. I learned this following quote in one of the classes I attended. "Sometimes the most dramatic photo is found after the big play. Simply shooting the play doesn’t necessarily give you an idea of how epic that 97-yard punt return really was. Watch out for players’ (and coaches’) reactions immediately after something big."

Keep up the good work and good luck with your sales.

rockcanyonphotos

I also donate all of my profits, for different reasons and to the local high school. I admire what you are doing.

I did take the time to look at a few of your football galleries. From what I can tell, it looks like you use a 70-200 lens.

I would suggest the following:

1) Change your settings you seem to typically have an f-stop of 7-8 with an ISO of 800-1000 on well lit days... way too much. drop your f-stop to 4 and your ISO to 400, you should easily still get a shutterspeed of 1/500 or better. Also dropping the ISO should allow you to crop your photos tighter

2) Change to Portrait mode. Most of your action shots are landscape and very wide angle. Football is a vertical game, focus on a specific player and let the action fill your frame.... this will get you some great facial expressions from the kids, which really make a photo.

3) Set your 70-200mm lens to 200mm and make yourself shoot the entire game at that setting. Once you get used to it, I think you will be very happy with the results you get ...much more emotion in your photos.

4) Watch your horizons or correct in PP.

5) Follow the kids at half-time, Shoot from about 10yds away so you don't distract the kids from the coach. I find I get some of my best close-ups while they are getting coached at half-time.

Regards, Kevin

becauseofanangel

Thanks for the feedback
I appreciate the feedback that has been given.
Thanks,
becauseofanangel

sportsshooter06

It's the middle of the night. everyone is a photographer.

Nice photos, i will echo the comments of another poster.
your exposure settings appear to be way off.

May i offer some help!

ISO- in daylight 200 is plenty, maybe 320 if you need some shutter speed
APERTURE- as wide open as the lens youuse will allow, this give maximum shutter speed.
SHUTTER- 1/500 is minimum for not blurring the motion. you do not need 1/4000 of a second for the little kids, and ISO 1000 is way too high.

WB- outside use cloudy and dial it down in your camera, cloudy
+2, will give you excellent daylight color.

SO, to sum up exposure is the combination of ISO, SS, Aperture.
lowest ISO , biggest aperture or wide open, will offer most of the time excellent ss. If you need more ss, increase ISO in small steps, until the meter is at 0 or slightly + or -, then you will have good exposure.

have lots of fun and learn to do a better job at cropping. One thing I do when I PP and do some cropping is crop to a specific size like 8x10, 5x7, 4x6 this will give your photos a better look, you can reverse those sizes and have a portrait setting very easy to do. Also try and straighten your photos, they look more professional and of course having a straight background will always make the photo look better.
Making good photos takes some work, but itis not that hard or time consuming.