Football is the national passion, thousands of people gather on Sunday afternoon to review the game of their favorite team, follow the sum of points in each round, or just look for a reason to mock the friend, follower of this team that does not walk. so many legs.
One way or another, football is part of the life of Brazilians, at least most, which means that as a photographer, you will inevitably face the task of capturing football photos and you must do it the right way.
- Doesn’t it matter if you’re going to capture football photos of?Naked from your friends.
- Colleagues.
- Group of amateur athletes who hired you to do so.
- Or if you want these images to appear in a sports magazine of famous teams and players.
- The way you do your job will be decisive to get lots of fantastic football images.
One of the most difficult sports for photography is football, imagine yourself in the middle of the forest capturing a tree that runs frantically from side to side and has other things that move with it, like in a football game.
You are focused on one player, while the other players move everywhere between you and the athlete all the time. It takes patience and a little knowledge of the game to get really good football images.
If this is your first time hearing about football photos, rest a sure you’re in the right place. These tips can help you take football photos the right way and get awesome pictures.
You need a DSLR camera, lower quality equipment or your cell phone camera, no more modern it sounds, you can’t do the job.
A DSLR camera does not have the annoying shutter delay found in the simplest models. In addition, the quality of professional cameras is probably better, which helps you get devastating football images.
Most professional sports photographers use the wide range of Canon DSLR cameras, for a number of reasons you can see on photography forums, they really look perfect, however, you can also get great football photos with a Nikon or Sony camera.
Of course, there are cameras of different brands, models and different prices, everything will depend on the budget available for the investment, pay as much as possible for your digital camera, but do not forget to set aside money for plate 2, which is also important.
The lens is as important as the camera! The boy?Kit? The lenses that will probably accompany your DSLR camera are not good enough to take good football photos, leave these basic tools for other types of photography, preferably your practice of various images, in which case you can even do the job. .
To get decent football images and capture all the action during the game, you will need a 200mm zoom lens, at least 300mm or more would be even better.
In terms of the width of the lens and the distance at which it can be opened to let light into the camera, it is better to use smaller numbers. It is recommended to focus lenses that only have an aperture number, such as f/2. 8 instead of f/4-5. 6, this is the sign of a high quality lens, the perfect type to make excellent football photos.
If your camera has a preset for?Action? Or something similar, you can use it for the camera to choose all settings for you; However, for photographers who want to be more responsible for camera settings, they need to master how to adjust shutter speed, ISO, shooting mode and focus.
These photo settings are part of a professional level of photographers, which can take some time to fully master; However, here’s the short version of the settings you’ll want to use:
Shutter speed: Turn on the camera?Television?(Canon) or? S? (Nikon and Sony) and leave it at least 500. The higher the shutter speed, the better for action scenes and football photos, right?Don’t be surprised if you have to set the speed up to 1250, do it!
ISO: Light is essential for football photos, as with any other type of photography, and the more precarious the light, the higher the ISO you need.
Shooting mode: Use high-speed streaming to capture as many football photos as possible from the same point of view.
Focus mode: Set the camera to? Continue? Or?AI Servo? To take football photos the right way.
JPG Photography: As you use continuous shooting of your camera, you will need the highest available buffer speed.
Just as each player warms up before each match, you also need to warm up. In other words, try the camera settings, angles and everything you can means taking football photos before the game starts.
You have to agree with me that there is only one way to do it, as long as the players are still in the locker room or warm-up, so take this opportunity to get more soccer photos off the market!
You can get excellent shots during warm-ups, especially from goalkeepers and teammates who may not have much time during the game and pose for the camera.
Try capturing from an angle where not many teammates are shown around or in the background, so you can use these football images to give the impression that the game sinks, an image that can be difficult to achieve during the game.
Your camera has many frames per second, but you can’t use it as a crutch, in the hope that the camera will give you a full picture.
The number one rule for perfect timing of football shots is to shoot early!You have to get into the habit of pulling the trigger sooner than your instinct tells you. Warm-up really comes into play here, you have to get used to every game, we get used to “shooting early”!
There’s no way you know what the perfect football photos will be in each match, when some people think that casting the nets is the right time, the player’s perfect position with his leg outstretched can bring more excitement to their football photos. .
Again, only practice can make it perfect and over time you will learn to identify the million-dollar photo of matches and make it a good example of well-made football images.
This means that you must first see how your photos will be used and shared. Today, you have many options, including making copies of an album, an email, image files, publishing them to a website, creating a slideshow, etc.
The most evocative thing is to tell a story about the competition, but it’s also important how you use your football photos because it can determine how to capture those images.
Similarly, you have to decide what perspective you want to convey with your football photos, do you want to show the performance of a particular player or the group work ?, will it be an album dedicated to the winning team or do you intend to tell the story?from the other side?
It is true that you already know that you can not photograph in front of the sun, it is difficult for your camera to be able to balance all this brightness, the best technique is to keep your back.
This, in addition to avoiding light against the sensor of your DSLR camera, will ensure that athletes, ball and field stay well lit during your football photo shoot.
It is better to be near the corner of the field, rather than walking away at a soccer game. Being close to the corner allows you to photograph the action coming your way, as well as close to the net.
If you shoot from the bench, your shots will consist mainly of players coming and going and you will have the bench of the opposing team in the background. Sit or sit on the floor when you compose your photo. This adds more drama to the photo and makes players more powerful, which is a really cool effect for football photos, especially for kids games. Lowering the camera also helps prevent a lot of background waste, distractions and focusing solely on the action.
Football is a sport that is based entirely on emotion, so your photos must be the same, that is, your football photos must express a feeling in each shot, tell a story and allow the viewer to see exactly what happens in the image.
This player who has just scored a goal will celebrate it and in his football photos this joy can be useful, but it must be fully visible, the goalkeeper who lets the ball pass will show his discouragement and this is also interesting in the football photos. I said, football photos are emotions and moments after a goal are the best chance to do it.
Another amazing trick to describe the emotions in your football photos is to look at the emotions of fans, you can always make great pictures with them. Fans present a number of emotions with the game, in each game and you can use each one. in your football photos and catch the attention of your viewers.
See how the grandstand reacts as soon as the player loses the goal, or the team star receives a red card and must leave the game, how he behaves when a foul occurs or the referee has just scored a penalty, etc.
Remember that all the excitement of your football photos is in people, so keep your attention on them and see how you can use them to form the perfect and emotional setting for all your football photos.
You’ve heard of him and there’s no need to emphasize it enough. The more football photos you take, the more professional you will be to get them and your feeling as a photographer will mature with each match.
So pack your bags, charge your batteries, collect your memory cards, cameras, and tripods, and go on your next adventure in search of soccer photos. Over time, you will develop your own techniques and accumulate tricks to share with others, or even to put on. Put what you have seen here into practice and you have real proof that it works, you can also perfect everything at any time.
Remember that no one is able to improve anything if you do not test your knowledge, in football photos, the best way to succeed is to face the daily challenges that only practice can bring.
In the football photos, the match does not end with the referee’s final beep, the match may also end, however, for the photographer, his work is not yet finished.
During this time and rest, you will be able to capture both teams, your relationship with each coach, the exchange of shirts and greetings between the players, etc.
All these situations are as important as the game itself, it is also possible to have many sensations at this stage and mainly take a dozen football photos.
This way, don’t play all your gear and run after the whistle, stay a few more moments in the field looking for these images that most people wouldn’t see Believe me, it’ll be worth it!
Football photos can be quite complex, even when it comes to editing and post-processing. As soon as the game ends and the files have been downloaded to your computer, your work is just beginning.
You should keep only the best images and use any photo editing software to enhance your football photos. It’s amazing how sometimes simple cuts can turn a photo into something amazing and much better.
For football photos that can’t be saved, use the delete button on your computer, that’s what it’s for. Even the most experienced professionals start with a lot of mediocre, blurry and poor exposure shots, just delete these images as they can’t be used anywhere.
Finally, keep in mind that football photos are used in different ways, in the sports catalog, billboard, magazine or sports newspaper, blog and web, etc. , however, the tips you have seen above serve you to orient yourself in this type of photographs and allows you to do everything in the right way.
While this list is not intended to be exhaustive, it is able to provide the basics for an excellent football photo shoot and give you hundreds of images of the beloved sport.
Take advantage of the comment area below to share your thoughts on all this and your advice so that any photographer can take soccer photos the right way.
Check out our article?10 ways to improve your career photos?