I've been putting together my portfolio and was hoping for some C&C. Since I don't have anything specific to target it to, I figured I'd put one together for sportsshooter...and try to get in unsponsored. Once I feel I have a little more direction, I'll concentrate more on the captions and specific sizes requested.

Unfortunately, I don't have as diverse a library as I thought I would. Aside from some shots from the stands last year, I can only reach back to october for anything substantive. I decided to distill my photos into 3 groups, and chose what I believed to be my 5 or 6 best pics for each...which would ultimately be condensed to the best 5 or 6 overall

Group 1.

1 NCAA's Leading Rusher Donald Brown, and ALL BE player Deangelo Smith


2 Sun Belt's All time leader in 13 offensive categories Tyrell Fenroy


3 Fumble Recovery for a TD


4

5 Fumble Recovery for a TD during the New Orleans Bowl


6 Senior Bowl


7



Group 2

8

9

10


SEC Player of the Year Marcus Thornton
11


Group 3
Nation's HR Leader, HR in game 3 of the '08 Super Regionals
12

13

14

15

16


This was the condensed data bank I've ultimately settled on. I'll probably go back over my recent baseball, and give my HS bball another once over.

Any insight as to my decisions is appreciated.

ETA: I think noise reduction was used 4&11...should I use the originals, or should I apply it to the others that could use it

John-

Looks like you've got a good edit to start with. I'm going to be concise, but I hope my input can be of use.

1. Maybe. Awkward crop.
2. No. A little out, noisy, and an awkward angle.
3. Maybe, SS was too slow.
4. No. Bad crop, awkward moment.
5. Maybe, needs to be straitened and toned.
6. Maybe. I want to see more faces.
7. This is more like it. Good frame.
8. No. Out of focus, noisy.
9. No. No eyes.
10. Yes. Pretty solid frame.
11. Yes. Maybe a little yellow.
12. Yes.
13. Yes, but I would drop this one if it came down to it. No face.
14. No. Neat frame, but BG is distracting.
15. No. Scattered composition.
16. Yes.

1 - 1/400th @ ISO 160 I'm hoping you made a mistake on the settings. Anyways, take away the "star power" and this shot is unimpressive. Delete.

2 - Crop it tight, and vertically. Having #33 on the left with the limbs cut off is a no, as well as the floating hand.

3 - Foot cut off. 1/320th @ ISO 250? Different game. I'm now worried about what your shooting. You shoot faster shutter speeds at night.

4 - Nothing of impact. Delete.

5 - Good enough. Colors feel dead though.

6 - No faces. Too loose. Delete.

7 - Keeper.

8 - Looks like warmups. Delete.

9 - Does nothing for me. Delete.

10 - Good enough. Keeper.

11 - Crop tighter, and its good enough.

12 - Good enough, though it has no ball.

13 - No eyes, but might be good enough.

14 - Not sure about this one.

15 - Not a fan of it.

16 - Great shot, even with no eyes.

5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 16 are the ones that strike me as having any potential. 10 and 16 probably are the most technically sound of the bunch, but none of these have the 'wow' factor, which is what you should be striving for with your portfolio shots. Don't rush it. If you're only drawing from last October (which is evident more from what you've posted than the words you typed), I'd say you have a lot more shooting ahead of you before you're ready to put together an impressive portfolio. You're on the right track. Keep at it.

Russ Isabella wrote:
5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 16 are the ones that strike me as having any potential. 10 and 16 probably are the most technically sound of the bunch, but none of these have the 'wow' factor, which is what you should be striving for with your portfolio shots. Don't rush it. If you're only drawing from last October (which is evident more from what you've posted than the words you typed), I'd say you have a lot more shooting ahead of you before you're ready to put together an impressive portfolio. You're on the right track. Keep at it.

Agree 100% with the add on that...all of them are in need of better post processing in my opinion. Colors look drab, washed and not crisp on many of them.

Mostly agreed. But I will say that bat on ball is totally not impressive, and in fact, I prefer the wraparound, with the player stoic, looking off into the distance... bat ever so slightly out of the hands, but floating still as it hasn't yet fallen.

So 16 out please.

And ya, You may wanna give these some digital love. If you need help, lemme know.

Max

another vote with the crowd on these. sportsshooter is funny, you never know what they will accept or not-so if that is your goal, go ahead and send in a 'portfolio' and let them critique you directly. if you were to try to use these with an editor, quite a few of them appear to suffer from exposure, iso limitation, color balance or focus issues. unfortunately, these technical issues take away from the image content and to some extent comment on your skills. (yes, bat on ball pics have been way overdone, so you take some 'hits' on that one.)

you may want to really focus on base fundamentals your next few times out--plus try doing some late afternoon daylight games now that spring is here--it will give your images an nicer look. if you are having problems with exposure, use an incident meter and shoot manual mode to control it (uniforms won't pull off your exposures). do a custom w/b if you want to really make sure the images are color balanced. (my kid shoots a color chart and uses post software to correct the raws, but that takes time but is required for super color sensitive high fashion mag editors). make sure your monopod is solid and you aren't moving the camera--and have a high enough speed for your long glass. the goal is to get the in-camera images ready to be used with very little or no post work--this saves tons of time when you are sending between innings, etc. (although, Max CAN fix anything post and still make deadline, my guess is he gets most of his stuff dead-on right off his card) also, don't shoot too tight, let the editors do your cropping since you don't know what they will want. the basketball ones are really tight.

my guess is in a few weeks you will have images that really start to have some snap (natural contrast) and are quite a bit better than above.

Bob's completely right. I try my best to avoid having to pull an image from the depths of bad white balance and exposure. I learned early on that if you nail all that in camera, it results in a higher quality file, and any adjustments are merely polishing something that's already good.

I will say that indoor lighting can be tricky. I see some of your images have that "damn it's flouro night" look to them. Your exposure isn't too bad, but you can do better.

Do yourself a favor: Learn your venues. I know the starting point for white balance and exposure in the venues I frequent regularly (for both Canon and Nikon). It may sound anal, but the truth is that it saves me time, and time is more valuable to me than anything (because you can make more money, you can't make time, it's finite).

Here's a quick take from last night's game. All are out of camera.
for a larger file, click:
Photo Mechanic - Suns vs Nuggets


In the sample, I use 2 different cameras on 4 different lenses, 3 different exposure values, and everything from Kelvin, to Flash, to Auto WB(yes auto, tested many times over several games, in mixed lighting, it provided the best result overall).

The point is, getting it done in the camera, means way less effort in post.

Max

Something else....While captions matter and are an important element of the portfolio for Sportsshooter, the kind of information you've posted here with your shots is irrelevant. It doesn't matter that your photo is of the player of the year, leading scorer, home run leader. What matters is the quality of the photo, and of course this is related to your other thread about the editor's answer to your question. A not-so-great photo is nothing more than that--a not-so-great photo. Doesn't matter a squat who that photo happens to be of. Your comment about not working much on the captions at this point, along with your decision to post what you consider to be relevant information about the content of your photos, suggests you think the 'who' is significant in the evaluation of image quality or portfolio worthiness. It's not.

Thanks for the input guys,

Color management is killing me...I always look over the photographers' shoulders whenever I'm in the workroom, and am amazed at the vibrance their photos have as they're sending them in.

After I got home from last night's game, I tried some trouble shooting to zero in on my problem. Hopefully the colors in these translate to the web better. If they do, I'm going to feel really dumb...If they don't, I'll just feel inadequate.

Well here's what I ultimately put together for sportsshooter...It seems to be an odd process though, since they immediately rejected my application before I was able to even submit any images. Regardless, I think this is still a more diverse and improved series.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

I have to agree with the others comments regarding the first set of images.

Regarding the Cheerleader shots, WB is still off, in the first the white uniforms are still quite orange , the last 2 images look much better.

I find the last set much better,
If you are going to keep #9 id crop it so at least the cone is gone, also WB is noticeably off.
#10 doesn't do much for me, if that was printed in B&W in a paper the ball would get lost in the background.

I think it great that you are shooting in manual exposure, it looks like you need to just think a little more about the setting, some i noticed you are at 1/320, ISO 250 and others you are at 1/6400 at iso 500.

Some are manual WB , ie the baseball shot, it way be daylight but you have to take into account the light reflected from the diamond. I prefer to use CWB in those conditions and indoors.