Tom Clark - Digital Photography Composition For Dummies

If your animal is well trained and you can get him to sit still for portraits, you should have a fairly easy time getting great images of him. After you have the animal's attention, take a few shots and reward him for being a good boy.

Photographers line up on the sidelines of professional and college sports venues with giant lenses to record the events as they unfold. The images captured from those sidelines are as real as it gets (without getting into war photography, of course). Players are filled with adrenaline and are living in the moment unaware of and unfazed by the cameras. Picture-perfect moments

are happening left and right, but if you don't have the appropriate equipment and skills, you'll miss everything.

Details, such as sweat getting knocked off one player's face when another player hits him, are important in sports photography. And you can't capture them unless you have a long, fast lens. By long, I mean telephoto. The closer your lens gets you to the action, the better. And a fast lens has a large maximum aperture, which allows you to shoot with faster shutter speeds. Shooting with a slow shutter speed usually is unacceptable in sports photography — unless it's a race and you're panning to show speed to show motion. (I discuss panning earlier in the chapter.)

Don't be tricked into buying a telephoto lens that isn't fast. Doing so would be a waste of money. The typical max aperture for a fast telephoto lens is f/2.8.

Telephoto lenses are naturally slower than normal and wide lenses. Because more distance exists from the front of the lens to the digital sensor, the light's intensity weakens on the journey. So, to make a long lens faster, a large amount of quality glass is required to let more light in. The more light that comes in, the more intense it will be by the time it reaches the sensor. And the more glass a lens has, the more expensive it will be.

If you find yourself in need of a fast telephoto lens but unable to afford one, you can rent one. It's better to rent a good lens than to buy a cheap one. Cheap telephoto lenses provide soft images that are useless in a photographer's portfolio.

In the following sections, I discuss some ways to get the best sports photos possible — assuming you've picked up the proper equipment.

Getting the shot

If you're at a sporting event and have the right lens for the job, your first task is to determine how much available light you have to work with and to choose the best exposure settings for your subject. You most likely want to be able to freeze motion, so you should try to shoot at 1/250 second or faster.

Opening your aperture all the way and using a high ISO enables you to have the quickest shutter speed possible. Just keep in mind that opening up the aperture on a telephoto lens gives you a very shallow depth of field. And using an ISO that's extremely high causes your images to have a lot of digital noise (the equivalent to film grain, but less attractive). Figure out what's most

important to capturing your subject in the best way possible, and then set your exposure based on that. (See Chapter 3 for more on exposure.)

As a sports photographer, you document events that you can't change or affect. But, you can control your composition. What you choose to include or exclude from your frame determines how viewers understand and read the image. Familiarity with the sport you're photographing helps you compose interesting and informative images. Be prepared for climactic moments so you don't miss the shot, and look for less obvious moments of relevance, too. Capturing facial expressions and reactions of players and coaches is sometimes more interesting than the action in the game.

-~^^ Vertical crops work well to maximize the size of individuals in a frame, and they're also good for headshots. Horizontals sometimes are better for showing the action.

Some sporting events are easier to move around at than others, but when possible you should try to change your position and cover some different areas. Doing so allows you to capture multiple angles and types of shots. Think creatively when choosing where to shoot. For example, a marathon could be covered in many different (and equally interesting) ways:

• Arial shots show the mass of people and the amount of space they take up.

" Side shots are best for capturing movement and action.

" Shooting from directly in front of the runners is great for creating a sense of power in the mass of runners. The best way to get this shot is to position yourself at a turn. This way the runners run straight toward you and turn before reaching you rather than running you over.

Minimizing unwanted motion biur

When shooting subjects in motion, you want to minimize motion blur in order to achieve sharp, high-quality photographs. If you've ever held a 400mm lens, you know that it packs some weight — and holding a long, heavy lens steady while photographing is a challenge. Getting the shot without having motion blur is difficult when you're shaking the camera and your subject is moving. Some lenses come equipped with an image stabilization function that's supposed to keep your shaky hands from affecting the shot. Even so, the only recommended way to hold a long lens in hand is if your shutter

speed is a higher number than the lens. For instance, a 400mm lens shouldn't be held in hand unless the shutter speed is 1/500 second or faster.

The best way to get sharp images is to put your camera on a tripod or monopod. A tripod is more stable than a monopod, but it's less efficient for moving around quickly. So, if you're going to be staying in one spot most of the time, a tripod would be ideal; if you have to be mobile, stick with the monopod. (Refer to the earlier section "Deciding whether to freeze or show motion" for information on eliminating motion blur.)

In This Chapter

Turning to fine art photographs

Understanding the elements used in abstract pieces

Working with multiple exposures and collages

Sparking creativity using digital techniques and film cameras

No black-and-white areas or defined lines separate artistic photography from commercial, scientific, and journalistic forms of photography. Any photograph can be considered art. For example, a microscopic image of the elements that make up a chemical can be used for scientific purposes but also can be used as an abstract piece of art (most people won't recognize what they see in the image anyway). Similarly, a journalistic piece can provide a message about the hardships of Cuban citizens, and an artistic piece can provide the same message. Commercial photography and artistic photography both usually are created to provide aesthetic pleasure. So how can you tell the difference?

Art photographs are those that are produced directly in accordance with the creative ideas of the photographer. Art typically has a personal message. It doesn't have to be truthful, politically correct, meaningful, relevant, representational, or clear in its message — but, of course, it can be. The thing about art photography is that you just know it when you see it. In this chapter, I discuss different art forms in photography and help stimulate your creative thought process.

Fine art essentially is visual art that has been created for aesthetic purposes. The quality of fine art is determined by its beauty and expressiveness. In photography, some common subjects for fine art include people, nature and landscapes, flowers, and still-life subjects. (See Chapters 13, 14, and 15 for more about photographing these subjects.)