Alright, so here are some pictures I took at my local tennis courts yesterday. I'm very new to shooting sports and I did not purchase my equipment (XT with a 24-105) with the intention of shooting sports. I just happen to be an assistant coach for my old high school's tennis team and I felt like snapping a few pictures of the team as well as some other players.
Any advice is welcome because I'm completely new to this and I've never done any reading or research on sports shooting technique/composition/etc. Thank you!
Let's start with the basics: Exposure looks good on these, and I'm not sure what you were intending to capture, so I won't comment on the action, which is good enough. Focus/sharpness looks pretty good as well (except for maybe the last one). You might want to raise your ISO so you can use faster shutter speeds if you'd like to eliminate the motion blur. One very simple thing you can do to improve these is straighten them. Every one of them is tilted judging from the fence posts in the backgrounds. This is easily fixed in photoshop. Another thing to consider: are you shooting at the widest possible aperture? This will help to throw the backgrounds out of focus and reduce their 'presence.' Other than that, you're off to a good start, and only continued shooting/practice will make a difference.
Thanks for the advice and critique. I'm actually kinda ashamed to say that I've never used photoshop. I've never done any post-processing on any of my photos, but I definitely want to start experimenting with the program. The fact that it costs hundreds of dollars also discourages my desire to photoshop.
I was using f/4 and I definitely will continue to take lots of pictures.
Joseph: Yeah, it's a big step to invest in Photoshop or a similar program, so don't go there unless you're sure you want to go that direction. Of course the best way to have your photos be level is to pay attention to this while shooting (which can be very difficult!). At any rate, enjoy your continued shooting.
Having played tennis at a high level for a long time I would suggest watching more tennis on TV. Get a tennis magazine or two to get an idea of what works in a tennis photo. By looking at these kids form they look like they were probably pretty good players so it is really down to getting the shots that really capture the "cool" parts of a tennis shot.
snaptie2002 - Thanks for the suggestion. I'm definitely considering that option. I'm tempted every time I go to my friendly neighborhood BJ's. Back when I had a PC I used to use IrfanView for cropping, but I can't seem to find a simple crop utility for Mac that can maintain a ratio and can flip the orientation of the crop frame.
Misty Mountain - Thanks! That definitely makes a lot of sense. My love of tennis definitely helped me out for these shots, in addition to knowing the timing of the people whom I was photographing. From now on, I feel as though I'll definitely be on the lookout to learn something from professional tennis photographs.
