Soccer

Hi Taylor,

Sorry for the 3/3 rating, but i'm sure as you experiment with sports photography things will improve quickly - i've looked through some of your other pics which really are very good, so don't be disheartened!

This pic isn't bad as a decriptive pic of the game, but it really lacks movement and detail.

There are two ways to improve on this,

Firstly - remember where the sun is! it sounds obvious but if you were shooting away from the sun instead of into you would find immediately that the colours came out naturally better (the faces would brighten up, as would the contrasting blues and yellows of the shirts). oh, and try not to include too much sky in the viewfinder - it tends to throw the light metering off.

Secondly - reduce the depth of field, so that less of the background is in focus, this will increase the detail in the focussed part of the picture and blur the unnexciting background. It helps to have a telephoto lens for this when working at a distance as you often are in sports.

It is entireley up to you about the cropping of this picture - it may be that people will want to see the pitch and others on the pitch to identify with the picture in a school paper, but if you want a technically better photo, you need to crop out the boring parts eg. the sky, goal and blue player in teh background.

Hope this helps

Tim

(not that I'm one)

You've taken this picture from the touch line. The professionals usually shoot from the goal line. The rationale for this is the interesting and thus marketable pictures are generally the attempts at goal and you want to see the faces of the players not their backs.

Simon

In black and white, everyone's a hero!

Taylor,

Not a bad shot. I agree with the previous posts; shoot from the goal line and try less depth of field. I also tend to shoot soccer more often with a vertical orientation.

On the other hand, I think you did a good job capturing the action. Many soccer photos catch players in awkward postions, and the viewer is lost as to what is happening. Here I can figure out what is happening and what #22 is likely to do next. (Of course, I have a lot more experience playing soccer than shooting it!)