should I be satisfied???

<p>I am a hobbyist and have a passion for hockey. I am in a fortunate position in that I have access to "rinkside" at my local arena. Like all photographers, I strive for the best results. I shoot in raw, manual with auto wb. I process in lightroom then touch up in cs6. While I understand that I not be able to produce results like the pros, should I be satisfied with my current results? Is there anything I can do to achieve better results with the software I have? Any tips would be extremely welcome</p>

<p>Yeah, that just jumps off the page. You are one fortunate fan and photographer!</p>

<p>I'd be very happy if I got results like that. I see nothing at all wrong with it. </p>

<p>thanks for your kind comments. Perhaps we are all guilty of being self critical at times! That was taken today at a game in the Norwegian elite league. Not the best of the bunch but not the worst either.</p>

<p>It looks great to me! The only thing I noticed was that the image is crooked. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but I noticed it. Cheers.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"While I understand that I not be able to produce results like the pros, should I be satisfied with my current results? .... Any tips would be extremely welcome"</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Brian, I'm not sure pros will produce much better results than what you've shown and I don't think anyone can tell you whether you should be satisfied, but if I may add my point of view as an observer and non-sports-shooter/hobbyist:<br>

<br>

Team-sport photography tends to look alike from one shot to another and usually a few good pictures will more than adequately represent a game. While you're able to achieve consistent technically high quality results, I think it might be beneficial to explore composition and perspective to achieve photos of alternate "look and feel" to add variation and interest to your work. <br>

</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Great action. I do find the unlevelness bothers me a little. You could straighten it but you'll lose part of the guard's stick. Also, the player and his stick on the left draws the eye away from the main action and out of the photo. This lessens the power of the action between the three main players. The lettering on the ads on the back distract too. If you open the aperture a little, it would blur more. Of course that's a trade-off as the depth of field will be narrow and you could lose the focus on the players. Obviously some of these things you ncan correct with PS and others you can't. Nice shot.</p><div></div>

<p>You or anyone else should never be satified with their photography. Photography is a continously evolving and learning experience. To be satisfied implies that you have become complacent which stifles improvement and creativity. However, there is nothing wrong with being happy with the results of this photograph! Very well done!</p>

<p>Ice hockey is very fast moving and the composition is changing continuously and very difficult to optimize. The shot is very fine, very good interest and certainly quite well balanced chromatically detailed. In looking at your portfolio of 18 hockey pictures, the only thing that you need to address I think is the framing of your photos. Often there is some interesting central action but in some of these cases there are bodies partly in and partly out of the frame or main players that are not all in the frame, which creates a bit of visual confusion and/or less than perfect compositions. Using a single focal length lens is very restrictive but if you use a zoom you can try to zoom back and forth to monitor that aspect so as to contain your main subject. Not easy to achieve, for sure, and maybe not even important for you. Note that I am looking at the images primarily from a compositional perspective which is but one quality.</p>

<p>I like the angle. I think it adds more motion to the shot. I would crop the left side down more, but other than that, this is a great shot.</p>

<p>I'm with the "<em>great image - but straighten it, please..!</em>" group, Brian - I thought the same about the image you posted in the Sports forum "What did you shoot last weekend..?" thread. </p>

<blockquote><b>brian mchattie wrote:</b><p>

While I understand that I not be able to produce results like the pros, should I be satisfied with my current results? Is there anything I can do to achieve better results with the software I have? Any tips would be extremely welcome</blockquote>

<p>

This is a great place to show off talent and the product you currently produce! But but both are clearly rather advanced in terms of your hardware (Nikon D4 and at least some kind of a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens), your software, and both your opportunity and ability to use the resources available.

<p>

What needs to be refined now is <b>intent</b>. Study the genre you have chosen and decide what characteristics about that type of photography you want to embody in your work. It is art, it isn't cut and dried, it's a matter of choice or opinion. Frankly my opinion or that of anyone else here, with the single except of you, is perhaps interesting but totally useless too. Oddly enough, your opinion today may not be of much value next week etiher! What you want is not static,

it's something you not only "refine", but it can just change directions for fun too!

<p>

A very good example is that one response suggested leveling the image, and another was not to do that. Both are right in terms of what makes that specific image better for them. The real question is what make it better for you.

<p>

I would suggest some intense study of hockey photography. First try to pick out specific photographers that seem to consistently produce work that you like. Then study their specific images to try and discover <b>exactly</b> what it is that makes you like a given image. You might find as an example that you most like shots that are not level! Or shots that have exactly three faces showing, or shots where you can see one player's eyes. You might like red colors, or green. There is no end to the list, and all of it is very specific to you.

<p>

With a known target for your style of photography, you can direct your time and attention to methods that will cause the characteristics you want to be more likely to exist in every shot. Or you might use a style where you try to shoot anything and everything, and sort it all out later (see Garry Winogrand for the ultimate example of that method).

<blockquote>

<p> It is art</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>No it's not - no photography is. It's a craft, nothing more.</p>

<p>FWIW, I love photography and I love Hockey. I like it. Great thing, is in that position, with your great equipment you will have plenty opportunity to hone your craft. I like the possible high stick that is about to occur if the defenseman doesn't bring it down:)</p>

<p>Once again I would like to thank each and all for your response. All comments have been read carefully and duly noted. A few interesting things which I will try.<br>

Although I do find it rather difficult to think about composition at higher levels of hockey, the subjects (players) in general, are usually happy with the results (my photos are not sold but are free to the teams and individuals with certain restrictions). </p>

I said, "It is art", and Keith Reeder repsonds:

 

"No it's not - no photography is. It's a craft, nothing more."

 

To which I refer you to a genuine authority on the subject of art. An exchange went like this:

 

Q: "What is art?" A: "What isn't?"

 

Now, given that every recognized authority on the subject agrees that photography is art, it is defined that way in dictionaries and taught that way at Universities, who do we believe?

 

The "What isn't?" was from Pablo Picasso of course. And yes, he was right.

<blockquote>

<p><em>"I said, "It is art", and Keith Reeder repsonds: "No it's not - no photography is. It's a craft, nothing more."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Every so often we need to iterate the distinction and relationship between art and craft. <br>

<br>

The art of photography is the ability to (or process of) bringing ones craft to life. <br>

</p>

<p>Photographers can be artists, but photography itself isn't art, no more than a Xerox is an art form. Art is creative, inventive. Most of photography is purely documentation. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Although I do find it rather difficult to think about composition at higher levels of hockey, the subjects (players) in general, are usually happy with the results (my photos are not sold but are free to the teams and individuals with certain restrictions).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Most people if they are in a picture are only interested in how they look. They usually aren't concerned with the overall aesthetics of the photo. They aren't emotionally neutral enough to guage the picture on its own merits. At least my wife keeps reminding me of that whenever I take a picture that she's in. I say "look at the wonderful bokeh, the composition." She says "look at my hair!". </p>

<p>So if you want to show your work to the general public who does not have a personal stake in the picture like the hockey players, the picture has to reach qualities that the general public is interested in. That does not mean you throw away your own standards of aesthetics. It's just that the players and public will look at the pictures differently. </p>

<p>Good point, Alan. </p>

<p>A victim of high-sticking who was smacked in the head won't necessarily appreciate a photo of it, but that's exactly the kind of photo that gets selected by publication editors. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"I'm with the "<em>great image - but straighten it, please..!</em>" group"<br /><br /><br /></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm with Team Angle.</p>

<p>As someone who shoots sports for a living I can tell you more composing is done in post then in the camera. Capture the moment like you did in your shot and worry about making it pretty later</p>

<p>Great shot - doesn't need straightening.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>While I understand that I not be able to produce results like the pros, should I be satisfied with my current results?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes and no. Your image shows technical competence, and you may feel "satisfied" with being better than most amateurs in that regard. But there is nothing to prevent you from producing "results like the pros".</p>

<p>To "produce results like the pros", or more accurately to produce great images, pro or amateur, start thinking about photography as a means of visual communication. Not unlike communication in writing, speech, or music, etc. There should be an intent in the communication, with a message to deliver and a tone to go along with it.</p>

<p>If your image were a written sentence or paragraph, then you get As for grammar and spelling. IOW, technically fine. But what is the message, and where is the tone? The image is confusing to this viewer. Is the goal scored? Are the players celebrating or in despair?</p>

<p>Now if your image clearly shows the plug is in the net, the scoring light is lit, the scorer's eyes are on the plug and raises his stick, and the goalie is in disgust, then you have a story. And Sports Illustrated will run it.</p>

<p>PN posts are full of advices on techniques, but rarely on communication.</p>

<blockquote><b>Rober K wrote:</b><p>There should be an intent in the communication, with a message to deliver and a tone to go along with it.

<p>[...]<p>

PN posts are full of advices on techniques, but rarely on communication.</blockquote><p>

An extremely well stated article!

<p>When the article I wrote on "intent" and this one on "communications" are properly understood, they are about exactly the same thing. Typically photographers produce "art", but may not recognize that art as a very technical form of communications using visual symbols. Just as written communications uses words as symbols and a writer seeks out appropriate words and phrases as their vocabulary of symbols that produce the desired effect in the mind of a reader, photography is the art of choosing appropriate visual symbols for the same purpose.

<p>

An interesting insight might be gained by considering how people with normal hearing learn to speak and then tend to "think" with a mental emmulation of hearing words spoken. We think in the language we speak in. But people with normal sight but who cannot hear commonly learn to "think" using a mental emmulation of visual symbols. It's a facility that those with normal hearing have too, but don't tend to even be aware of.

<p>

Another related side trip on visual communications involves painting rather than photography, but it provides facinating context into the degree of usefulness in understanding the entire concept. Here is a quote worth thinking about:

<p><br />

<blockquote><b> http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/art_movements/cubism.htm</b>

<p>

"Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque conceived and developed Cubism

but other artists also adopted the style. The Spanish artist

Juan Gris, who is often referred to as the 'Third Musketeer of

Cubism', was the best of these and he refined the Cubist

vocabulary into his own instantly recognizable visual language." </blockquote>

<p>

For those who have never been able to understand Pablo Picasso and Cubism, there it is in a one paragraph nutshell!

<p>

To gain a better insight, and one focused on imagery, Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) was a perceptual psychologist who wrote the defining text "Art and Visual Perception" in 1954 (and published a revised version in 1974). He is not an easy read, but it is well worth the time.

<p>

There is also an essay by Arnheim, Entropy and Art, available online, which comes highly recommended. I am very fond of quoting a passage from the introduction:

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>"Art and Entropy", www.kenb.ca/z-aakkozzll/pdf/arnheim.pdf </b>

<p>

When nothing superfluous is included and nothing indispensable

left out, one can understand the interrelation of the whole and

its parts, as well as the hierarchic scale of importance and

power by which some structural features are dominant, others

subordinate.

</blockquote>

<p>That is of course true for photographs, paintings, and for that matter for written text too.

<p>One way to view post processing of photographs is as nothing more nor less that editing a list of symbols to get them in the right order within that "hierarcic scale of importance and power".