How to take sports photos?

First, the artistry of documentary.

The works of many sports photographers fully show that the documentary photos of a certain sports competition can be taken in an artistic and creative way, and an artistic sports photo is not necessarily without documentary value. Ordinary newspapers require photos to be documentary and reflect the decisive moment of the game.

Second, the advantages of amateur photography

The biggest advantage of amateur photographers is that they have no mental burden. You don't have to record the actions of superstars. You can easily find the shooting scene and choose the shooting object. For artistic sports photography, the name of the contestant is irrelevant, what matters is the attitude of the athlete and the photographer's ability to express in the photo. A beautiful photo of a small game is undoubtedly much better than a bad photo of a big game.

Third, the training of photographers.

Investigation and study. If you want to shoot any kind of sports, you should fully contact this kind of sports and understand its characteristics. Only in this way can we predict when and how the most wonderful scenes will appear and seize the opportunity to capture vivid scenes.

Skilled skills. Movement is characterized by quickness and changefulness. This requires the photographer to be agile and skilled, and be able to adjust the aperture and distance in a very short time to shoot. This skill can only be mastered through a lot of practice.

Fourth, the key to success.

For a successful work, it is very important to stimulate emotional response. Whether a sports photo is praised or not depends mainly on the information content of the photo, not on the superb shooting technology. The more information a photo conveys, the higher the quality of the information (that is, the more original the shooting technique) and the stronger the appeal of the photo. But the information mentioned here does not necessarily refer to the documentary of a sports competition itself, and any other situation is information. For example, the speed of performance, the mood of the audience, the facial expressions of athletes, the winning posture of shareholders and the frustrated expression of losers. Dynamic, static, beautiful, novel, close-up details, space and color can also have high information content, as long as they are used properly, they are suitable for the content to be conveyed by photos.

The durability of the value and attraction of photos depends on two major factors: "what" (subject matter) and "how" (composition). The combination of the two determines the quality of the photos. "What" is mainly determined by personal interests and the requirements of contributors. "How" is mainly determined by personal style and hobbies.

Five, several special methods

Since the characteristics of sports are fast speed and changeable movements, photographers should try their best to show these characteristics in their photos. Must be good at using some special shooting methods according to the specific situation.

Action "solidification": This is the most commonly used method. The outline of his face and body was clearly and truly reproduced, and people saw the details that could not be seen at that time because they were moving too fast.

In the case of poor light, even if the aperture is opened, the required shutter speed cannot be obtained. At this time, we should take a snapshot when an action reaches its climax and is close to completion, that is, when the action tends to stagnate before changing direction.

Tracking shooting: move the camera smoothly along the moving direction of the target, so that the position of the target in the viewfinder remains unchanged all the time, and press the button while moving. This method can be used to photograph sprinters, riders and drivers in sports. Its effect is that the athletes' images are clear and the background is blurred. The advantage is that the messy background can be avoided from destroying the picture, and the blurred background can set off the quickness of the action. The shutter speed of the following methods is usually115-1/60s. If you are not sure, you can take several photos with different shutter speeds for the same target to choose from.

Blur effect: When shooting fast motion at low shutter speed, the outline of the image will appear blurred. This can not only produce a sense of movement, but also show the quickness of action. However, the degree of ambiguity should be moderate. Too much blurring will make the subject unrecognizable, and not enough blurring will make people mistakenly think that there is something wrong with the photo. You can try different shutter speeds to compare. Reducing the aperture is still too high for the shutter speed. You can use a gray filter, a polarizer or a red filter. However, the use of filtering will cause changes in color and tone.

Zoom shooting: press the shutter and push the zoom lens at the same time, so that the focal length of the lens becomes shorter from long. In this way, slow movements can be "accelerated", which is very dramatic. The outline of the main body extends obliquely in all directions from the center of the picture, as if it exploded towards the camera. This effect can only be achieved with a low shutter speed (115s-1 sec), so it is best to use a tripod. While pressing the shutter, you can quickly move the camera up, down or to an instance according to the action direction, and you can also get similar effects.

Sixth, exposure

The exposure measurement object is naturally the main part of the photo, that is, the athlete. However, it is often difficult for photographers to approach athletes. At this time, you can use other people nearby or your own palm instead.

If the camera used has an automatic exposure device, it is best not to use an automatic exposure system in some cases. Because the background is constantly changing with the change of the athlete's position, when the background occupies a large part of the picture, the reading measured by the automatic exposure device does not represent the brightness of the athlete, which will lead to inaccurate exposure of the subject.