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Would REALLY appreciate some feedback/advice before tomorrow, soccer


farski

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<p>Hey everyone,</p>

 

<p>Last week I was bored and showed up to the local HS soccer game, and told one of the parents I know that they could have all the

photos

since I was just doing it for fun. After the team saw the shots the guy I know called me up and asked me to come back and cover

tomorrow's game.</p>

 

<p>I'm confident I could get results as good as the first time if I just show up, but I would love to be able get even better shots, or at least

a higher percentage of quality shots. I would very much appreciate anyone taking the time to look through the gallery of the first game and

give me any thoughts on: more of this, less of that, cropping issues, color/post-processing problems (sometimes I get a little over zealous

with contrast), etc. Even just some ideas for more creative or interesting shots or where to stand (other than the sideline...) or things you've

learned yourself from covering soccer</p>

 

<p>All I have to use is a D300 and 70-200 (and a 50mm, but I brought it last time on my backup D70 and didn't use it once)</p>

 

<p>Anyway, here's are the shots from the first game. Again, I'd really appreciate any input:</p>

 

<p><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/farski/sets/72157607329401546/">http://flickr.com/photos/farski/sets/72157607329401546/</a></p>

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Hey Christopher, i would add some pictures of ecstatic fans or a short-fused coach. You could also capture some emotions

after the game (exhausted players resting on the grass...). Postprocessing is a matter of personal taste - i really like Your pictures. Please

excuse my terrible english and just shoot the second game like the first one You have posted. georg

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Hey Christopher, i would add some pictures of ecstatic fans or a short-fused coach. You could also capture some emotions

after the game (exhausted players resting on the grass...). Postprocessing is a matter of personal taste - i really like Your pictures. Please

excuse my terrible english and just shoot the second game like the first one You have posted. georg

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Hey Christopher, i would add some pictures of ecstatic fans or a short-fused coach. You could also capture some emotions

after the game (exhausted players resting on the grass...). Postprocessing is a matter of personal taste - i really like Your pictures. Please

excuse my terrible english and just shoot the second game like the first one You have posted. georg

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Christopher: It's nice work! I like Georg's idea, certainly. The only thing I notice is that in many cases, you've got a fair amount of background clutter in focus. Not a show-stopper or anything, but some of those scenes may be more compelling if the action was a bit more isolated. Of course, a wider aperture means you lose some DoF, and focusing is fussier... but it looks like you have enough light for the D300 to be dead-on regardless. Anyway, that's just my two cents' worth. Good luck! (sell some!)
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Good point Matt. I started shooting that game wide open at 2.8 and found that it was just too shallow for most circumstances when more

than one person was vying for the ball. I ended up just picking a (too) small aperture to shoot the rest of the game; I'll work on actually

changing the DoF for different scenarios tomorrow. Even if that fails I think I could find a better do-it-all aperture, thanks for the heads up.

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Well if that's your first time shooting soccer, I would say you nailed it. Your exposures looked good and I thought you did a good job with the DOF to keep background distractions (like the school bus and parking lot) at a minimum. It looked to me like you shot them wide open. There are a few you could have cropped closer, but overall they looked pretty good. Parents will certainly be happy with what you have there.

 

You'll find the 70-200 can be short at times for a large field like soccer... I always thought it was when I shot my nephew's games.

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Christopher, sorry for the triple-post - the server was kind of sluggish. Additional idea: try to include some pictures of the

goalkeeper - preparing for the corner, directing the defense-players. Coaches do like photos of players showing some kind

of leading-qualities. Dont include pictures like DSC_8618. @ Matt: Christopher was using 2.8 already - not much room for

improvement in this matter - except he rents a 300 or 400. Have fun, georg.

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Kevin, I've been shooting sports for a while, and I do a lot of ultimate (as in frisbee) which has a lot of the same field motion as soccer, so

that helped out quite a bit, but it had been a long while since I actually covered a game so it's great to hear that I'm on the right track. The

70-200, even on a DX, definitely is a little bit limiting; I only felt comfortable shooting whichever half of the field I was on, and if I was on

the end line I wouldn't really even reach the midline. I'm thinking about getting a 1.4TC or 1.7 if I start making any money off this.

 

DoF, Yeah Georg is right, when I looked back at the meta data I was at 2.8 for all these shots. I guess I was just hoping I had some room

to improve isolation.

 

Georg, I'll do some experimenting with capturing the keeper; that's definitely the position I'm least familiar with in terms of knowing how the

act or react. And it seems like at the HS level there aren't a ton of shots on goal, so I'll try to make the best of what they do between

saves. And yeah, I agree that 8618 is a weak shot.

 

Thanks everyone for the continued input!

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That DoF isolation issue is compounded by the distance between you and the subjects, and the distance between them and the objects behind them. You're up against the laws of physics, there, so there's only so much you can do. You shooting position (and some luck!) will probably have more to do with the background issues than a stop or so, one way or the other.
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Christopher, your photos are good. I shoot a lot of soccer and can tell you for sure my first time out was not as good as yours. Your D300 is a great DLSR for sports (I use that body as well). The 70-200 f2.8 lens is a good lens as well particularly when the light isn't the best like on overcast days (although the 200mm reach can be a little limiting some times on a large soccer field).

 

I have a youth sports photography blog where I write about the trials and enjoyment of capturing youth sports photos. Most of my posts and photos on the blog are about soccer. Check it out. There might be some "nuggets of wisdom" you can use.

 

http://www.spotmetersports.com/

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  • 1 month later...

I hate to revive such an old thread, but I figure it's better than starting a new one. (There are a few questions at the end of the post...)

 

So after that first time out shooting the local HS team, one of the parents (that I've known forever) basically said the booster club would

pay me a

little to keep shooting and put together and EOY slideshow. I was probably going to keep shooting the games anyway, so making a little

money off

it was a very welcomed bonus. I ended up shooting eight games.

 

The fact that it was, to some extent, a job now affected things in a few different ways. For one thing, I had to split time with the JV and

varsity

teams, and to be honest, the JV games simply don't yield shots that are as good, or at least not in such high volume or percent. Also,

instead of

just shooting for good shots, I had to start making sure I wasn't completely ignoring some of the athletes.

 

This was especially cumbersome when it came to the keepers; since HS soccer apparently has very few shots on goal, I would spend

20 minutes

(i.e. a quarter of the game) with my lens on the goalie just waiting for something to happen. And when it did, it was usually a roller. I

started taking a

lot of shots during warmups, where the keepers get a lot of action, and in general it looks legit, but it's nice to look a photo and say "that

was the

great save at the end of the game." Thankfully by the end of the season I did get some nice in-game shots of the goalie.

 

I filled up my card just about every game, which equates to about 800 photos, and in Lightroom I would go through and make my picks.

On average

I got about 50 shots that I thought were either: great shots; showed an event from the game that the athletes/parents would remember

(even if in my

eye it wasn't a superb shot); or was just a shot I knew the athletes would like to see (again, regardless of technical excellence).

 

One thing that I don't do as often as I would like is rate my photos in Lightroom (with the stars, from one to five). I was wondering if

anyone who

does do that diligently could provide some feedback in terms of what kind of system you have come up with. For instance, the few

times I've tried

to do ratings, I will look through all my photos from a set (say, all 400 picks from the entire season) and find the absolute best one...

Best in terms

of content, color, lighting, background, action, faces, etc. Sometimes I think that photo deserves a 5, and sometimes I think, "well,

hopefully a year

from now I'll be able to take an even better photo than that" so I give it like a 3. Then I'll go through and, again, sometimes give the

worst picks one

star, and other times make some sort of minimum for what even gets one star. As you can tell it's very inconsistent, so I always end up

zeroing out

my ratings after a few months and starting over. Basically a waste.

 

Anyone have a good system?

 

One other thing I offered to do was make a nice print of each of the seniors. I was thinking just a nice black and white with their names

on it; but if

anyone has done something like that (but different) I'd love to hear about.

 

Last question: Does anyone have any ideas or examples of things they've done for slideshows other than the standard 5 seconds per

photo and

cross-fade? I do know my way about Final Cut and After Effects well enough to put together just about anything, but honestly I can't

invest that kind

of time for this. Just wondering if anyone has some simple, quick, easy additions to a slideshow that I haven't thought of.

 

Thanks for any help, if you're bored (and if you've made it this far in this post I'm guessing you are...) here are all the albums from the

games if you

want to look through them. To me, there's not a lot of difference between the early and later shots, and I wouldn't say my percentage of

great shots

really went up too much, so I didn't really "grow" as a photographer as much as maybe I would have liked, but it could also be that my

own

standards got higher as the year went on. Anyway, if you have any comments I'd love to hear them.

 

http://flickr.com/photos/farski/collections/72157607945383805/ (sorry it's not a link, don't feel like switching the whole post to html)

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