I have been in photography for just over a year and I love to shoot sports. I just bought a Canon 7D in 2011 and would like some C&C on some photos so I can improve my sports shooting. Thank you for your timel
yeah they came out big for some reason, I printed a couple of those in 8 x 10 for my brother and they didnt print out that noisy, I am going to re do them
The first thing you're going to want to do is downsized your first two photos. They are 1600 px on the longest side which means vertical scrolling to see everything. The third one is fine size wise, but it is significantly out of focus.
I'm not sure what's going on with the first shot. Did she get poked in the eye? There is enough ambiguity that I wouldn't have kept it.
On the second, there is also some confusion on my part, but probably due in part to the tight crop. I'd prefer to see a head to toe composition on this.
The third is also too tight.
Overall, the basketball shots you posted appear to be 100% crops. Everything is soft and the noise is indicative of this being full size. Also I'm wpndering if you did any noise removal on this since all the detail is gone. Look at the hair.
The baseball shot, sorry to say, looks nothing more than a fan snap with a heavy heavy crop that was out of focus to begin with and trying to be saved by sharpening in post.
Ok, resized them, and got them all back in, laptop froze up on me. She got poked in the eye in the first shot. I shot all these horizontally, and cropped to vertical. The first is my niece, I kept this shot for my brother so he can use it at her graduation party in a few years as a funny picture. She was fine three minutes later. I did noise reduction in light room as I had alot of noise in all the pictures, they were in a dark gym.
I shoot Nikon so I have no idea what kind of noise the 7D can handle, but I would think that LR would be able to clean these up just fine.
How much cropping is involved? Are you shooting from the stands?
You might be able to lower your SS a bit since very young kids tend to not move as fast as the bigger kids.
If you get your White Balance and exposure right in Camera I find noise shows up less, if you have to add exposure or fill light ect in post it brings more noise out.
No, I was shooting from the floor, but the room was really tight, two games going on in one gym with alot of people, seats for parents to sit are actually on the court in alot of places. I used a 70-200 2.8 L-series lens, and I only shot when the action was close. I shot horizontally, so I cropped them to vertical. The shots I took when they were on the other side of the court had alot of noise in them, the gym wasnt that well lit. I am new with photography and I am not sure if I am using the right focus settings on the camera. I shoot the sports in AI SERVO.
First it looks like you were shooting manual, which is fine. But it looks like you are dealing with a lot of color shifts from cycling lights. Shoot RAW, that'll help you fix the white balance in post. Bump your ISO up to 3200 and get a faster shutter speed. #2 looks like there's some motion blur.
As for #4, I would just delete it, way too much of a crop to be worth anything.
Take the advice you get from here and keep practicing and keep posting. That's the only way you'll get better.
#4 was shot with a rebel t2i. I did shoot RAW in photos 1 - 3. Im not fully understanding white balance as of yet, so correcting it in lightroom 3 I am just guessing when I mess with the settings as there are alot of custom settings in lightroom. I have a question about bumping my ISO up to 3200. I get alot of noise at 2000, so with 3200 won't the noise be even worse, and if so, is it correctable in lightroom to make the picture look good? I value all the comments I receive on here, and am really grateful for all the feedback and help I receive on here. I really want to learn as I have a passion for sports and photography, and I want to combine the two.
Off the subject, but if you want to be treated as a professional, then act like one and charge accordingly. I have been on here too long to give FREE advice to photographers that are practically doing the same with their clients.
I dont consider myself a proffessional yet, thats why I am on here to learn. I have alot of friends with children who play sports who tell me my photos are great and they want me to shoot photos of their kids who play, and want to pay me for doing it. I also have requests for family pictures and senior portraits. They arent photographers, while its nice hearing from them how great my pictures are, I also know they probably don't know any better, so I want to have my photos critiqued by professionals so I can learn how to put out a quality product and not junk. I have started a web site, with some pricing, and I know Im not charging that much yet, because I know my quality is no where close to charging top dollar, but on the other hand Im not going to go out and shoot all these pictures for free either. When I am satisified that my quality is up to par, and I have professional photographers tell me that I have amazing shots, then I will consider myself professional and charge top dollar for anything I do.
Noise will always trump motion blur. Lightroom 3 has good noise reduction, so I would just use that.
If you underexpose and fix in post, you will create more noise. So either get the exposure right in the camera or over expose slightly so you can bring it down in post.
As for white balance, compare #1 and #2. The skin tone in #1 is a lot more yellow and #2 is a lot more purple. Play with the white balance slider in Lightroom and try to get it right.
In LR3 there is the white balance "dropper". Use it to select white or grey and it gets you close, then tweak from there.....
Once you have a WB in LR use those numbers to set your camera up for your next shoot. While the cycling lights will throw some of your WB off it will be a good starting point. If you are shooting in Different buildings all the time keep track of the WB in each or on your first trip out use the back LCD to set it. You might not be able to get the WB bang on using the LCD screen but you can get it very close.
Like I said before, get the settings right in Camera and the noise will take care of itself.
Got it, thanks for the great advice mk, I didn't know any of that. I will try these out at the High School game I will shoot either Tuesday night, or Friday night, and post my results. I have one last question about lightroom, I don't see a white balance slider in lightroom, is it called something else? Thanks for pointing out the skin tone difference also, I didnt notice that until you pointed it out.
One of the problems with your strategy though is that if you start selling photos before you are ready (none of the ones you've posted show me that you are ready-well #3 maybe) is that your could harm your reputation. If they are truly good friends, give them a few photos of their kids. Don't solicit business until you are ready.
Your friends are probably not going to tell you your photos suck. They are friends and will say nice things. Friends do that. Try to ignore their comments. I'd rather be told my photos suck by Paul Alesse than my photos are great by a friend. Paul's comment will force me to get better, get out of the business or if I ignore him, keep producing crap and not growing and learning. My friends comments stroke my ego, but don't help me get any better.
One of the best things you can do here is read posts, lots of them. Study the images presented and the critiques received. Go out and shoot and post your own images here. Learn from your critiques. Lather rinse and repeat. Many times.
I checked out your website. It's a good start, but you need to cull a lot of your poor images out. People will make a judgement about your skills and abilities after looking at a few images.
As for some guidelines for posting here:
Post 4-8-12 or so photos - process them as you would for a client. Once you start getting feedback, don't change them out. You can add additional images or re-post edited ones, but don't take down the originals. All context is lost when that happens and just turns the thread into a mess. I guess the one exception would be sizing errors. Resize the images if you've uploaded too large to too small files, but don't change them or edit them further. There are 6-10 exceptional shooters who frequent this board regularly. They can be a tremendous asset. By reading a lot of the posts here, you will get a feel for who knows their stuff and is willing to help. Paul is one of them. When he gives you advice, listen/read it carefully. Take it to heart. Go out and work on improving and then post again.
zSCOTTz wrote:
I dont consider myself a proffessional yet, thats why I am on here to learn. I have alot of friends with children who play sports who tell me my photos are great and they want me to shoot photos of their kids who play, and want to pay me for doing it. I also have requests for family pictures and senior portraits. They arent photographers, while its nice hearing from them how great my pictures are, I also know they probably don't know any better, so I want to have my photos critiqued by professionals so I can learn how to put out a quality product and not junk. I have started a web site, with some pricing, and I know Im not charging that much yet, because I know my quality is no where close to charging top dollar, but on the other hand Im not going to go out and shoot all these pictures for free either. When I am satisified that my quality is up to par, and I have professional photographers tell me that I have amazing shots, then I will consider myself professional and charge top dollar for anything I do....Show more →
Scott... I understand what you are saying... shoot family all you want. No problems there. But... once you shoot "friends" and other kids on the team, and charge for your services, whether you like it or not, you are now considered a professional and will be held under the same scrutiny as all professionals. What I try to stress with new shooters is to understand the industry as a whole. If you charge 30 bucks for an all you can eat CD to a friend or a teammate and EVERYONE were to do that, it impacts us all. When that teammate now goes to an event, he's going to expect the same pricing as you have been giving him and that's what hurts us all. Why should I pay the photographer $250 for an unlimited CD of my kid if Scott is doing it for $30.00?
And I'll still go as far as giving you enough leeway by saying that if you still choose to do it, then do it. Nothing is going to stop you. But don't come here and ask for advice from us either. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Not when you're taking the cake off our tables.
Welcome to the forum. It can be daunting to just be starting out and while I'm far from "just starting out" I'm still daunted by the stuff I see here.
What Paul says rings true no matter at what age in your career you: act professional. Whether you conciser yourself a professional or not is beside the point. When you show up on the sidelines with a camera and start taking pictures, people that don't know you have no idea whether you actually are a professional or not.
Let's take a slightly preposterous example. Ima Photographer starts running all over the basketball court during the game taking photos. When Ima Photographer is removed from the venue and told never to come back, the problem isn't over. Ima Photographer has set a precedent for people by her (or his -- I'm not sure if Ima is guy or girl) bad example that they can run around on the court with a camera during games.
Seems crazy right? Not so much. Here's why:
While I've never heard of the above example happening, it's just as preposterous to a professional photographer as someone who is giving away their photo(s) (whether for free or next to nothing). And that happens all the time.
I'm not going to tell you what to charge. Legally, I can't. I can tell you that if you see your photography as a business and approach it as one, you will soon see that you cannot afford to be "giving away" your photos.
You could make 400K as a senior partner at a law firm and to quite frank, $25 dollars from some parent is nothing you care about. That's fine if you don't care about the money, but to Paul the Professional photographer, that $25 is a huge deal because that means someone values his product enough that they are willing to pay for it.
Now imagine that you charge $8 dollars for a photo that most other photographers in your area charge $20-$25 for. Because you have a full-time job, you just want to cover the cost of printing, but the other professionals in your area need to cover the cost of printing and they need to pay rent or their car insurance or buy groceries with that that money.
When Sally Parent comes along to Paul the Professional and says "I'll give you $8 for this because that's what Ima Photographer charges and I'm not paying more than $8," Paul the Professional is going to be pissed at Ima Photographer, not because Paul didn't get that one $25 dollar sale, but because he knows more and more people are going to want that photo of their kid for $8, not $25. And that means he's going to have fewer customers or have to cut his prices so that Sally Parent and Mike Parent will buy his work.
That might seem silly to you, but ask any professional photographer about the devaluation of photography and they will rant worse than I.
Everyone has to start somewhere. If your work speaks for itself then you shouldn't be worried about some newb stealing work from you. In this day and age everyone has a camera and tons of people have DSLR's. The people that aren't willing to pay $250 aren't going to pay $30 either. They're going to grab a blurry shot with their cell phone and for them that's good enough. If people aren't willing to pay for your prints/CD, it's either because they don't see the value in it or because they don't see a difference that sets it apart.
Thanks for the advice Tim, I started a website at the urging of all my friends. I know I'm not close to being ready. Your right about the friends telling me I'm great, thats the last thing I want to hear, thats why I signed up on this board. I want to hear my photos suck so I can improve. I never intended to start selling photos. I only bought the camera to take pictures of my Nephew who is a baseball star at a local high school, so I could make 8 x 10 action photos of him playing for my parents who are retired in Florida as birthday gifts. I also joined a camera club and they got me into doing stuff other than sports. As I got better my friends at work, I work in a large factory, starting badgering me about shooting pics of their kids playing sports and offering to pay. I said I would as they seem to like them, thats why I don't charge that much. They show other parents the pictures I have printed out in 8 x 10 and now they want photos of their kids and its kinda snowballed on me. We don't have a sports photgraher in my area that do action shots, just T & I. I just need to find a way of telling others no, without being rude until I am ready. I know one thing, I am willing to learn all I can on here to be the best I can be, I am thankful their are professionals out there willing to help me. I only have a year of experience under my belt, so I don't know all the terms or understand my camera fully yet, so all advice is greatly appreaciated.
