Taking Sports Photos

If you run a sports team or a club, you’re inevitably going to be confronted with the prospect of promotion at some point.  Taking cool photos is a big part of this type of promotion.  However, sports photos are actually a pain in the backside to get right – simply because the subjects are on the move so much!  That’s why we’ve put together this guide on how to get effective photos of your sports team, whether they’re going on canvas prints UK, or on a local newsletter. 

Because sportsmen and women are constantly on the move, it’s useful to have a very high shutter speed in order to capture the action quickly.  However, the downside of this is that the fast shutter means that less light can reach the image sensor of your camera.  This means that photos can be blurry, or dark.  This is especially the case for indoor sports.  There are three main ways to deal with this: 

Changing the aperture.  Put simply, the aperture is the hole that light travels through before it reaches the image sensor on the back.  If you open it up more, then more light can get in as a result.  And with more light available, you can increase the shutter speed.  The downside of this is that when the aperture is opened up, the depth of field in the photo is reduced.   Unfortunately, opening the aperture is therefore a balancing act.  

Using a flash.  The second main option for increasing light is obviously the ‘classic’ one.  Flashes are simply a wonderful way of increasing the light onto the subject.  This means that in combination with a slightly increased aperture and an increased shutter speed, you’ll be able to take some seriously great (non-blurry!) sports photos.  There are, of course, a couple of drawbacks to flash photos:  firstly, if the flash itself is aimed directly on the subject, you can risk washing out some of the colours and over-exposing bits of the frame. Secondly, the range of a flash can be quite short – so it won’t work from the other side of a huge school gym! 

ISO Speed.  Whilst it might sound a bit jargon-y, ISO speed is the posh word for how quick your camera’s image sensor reads the light coming into it from outside.  If it’s increased, then this means that the aperture and shutter speeds can also be increased, leading to less blurring and darkening of your photos.