outdoor sports photography

[Curtis Cunningham]

Yesterday afternoon I went to handout some order forms for the soccer photography I'm going to be doing over the next several weeks. After handing out the forms, and showing my samples, I took a few test shots of the general area that I'd like to do the photos in. I've included the three different shots I made to get your feedback on what I could do to make the photos of the players in the coming weeks the best that I can. The pictures below were taken at 5:30 PM, and I fully expect to be shooting anywhere from 5:30 to 6:30 or so when there's players and teams to shoot.

You can tell from the shadows by the trees that the sun is above and to the left of the frames. So the players won't be looking into the sun, and neither will I shoot into the sun. I think the players might even be backlit a tiny bit, but it's hard to tell.

If it's sunny on the shoot days as it was yesterday afternoon, I'm wondering if I expose for the sky and then bring an external flash (Canon 580 EXII) and use it off camera to light the subject if that will be enough to make a pleasing exposure on the subject's face. I don't want to blow out the sky, but at the same time I don't want the subject to be underexposed. I could possibly bring a studio strobe along (but I'd need to find a portable power source first), but I'm not sure if I need to go through all the trouble of doing so.

I can bring along a stand with a reflector to bounce back light into the face, but am unsure as to the best position to place it.

One last question. Do you think that by placing the kids/teams in the approximate area that my bag is in, that the track in the background is distracting? Or should I try to do the shots between the track and the trees (assuming there's room).

What I will do between now and next week when I do my first shoot, is to go and do some test shots right around the same time of day (5:30 to 6:30pm) to try and figure out the exposure/positioning issues.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I'd appreciate any feedback from those who have done this kind of event shooting before.

[michaelnotar]

i wouldnt include the sky, the trees are nice. i would shoot them closer to the trees than the track to exclude it. looks like there is room. when i shot a few quick sports portraits, they kneeled and i shot down, on a flat field, so grass was the bkg. i think i had the sun as a hair light and used flash as the key.

[David_Buzzard]

Those trees are going to be a big distraction, and also going to flatten out the photo, and you might lose some of the players in the background clutter. Also, if you have the sun behind them, it's going to silhouette the team.

David Buzzard's Technical Blog

[Curtis Cunningham]

Originally Posted by michaelnotar

i think i had the sun as a hair light and used flash as the key.

I'll try that out and see if I can find a place such that the sun can come through the trees as the hair light.

ALSO, do you have any recommendations as to how I best go about posing the players? I'm considering doing two poses/player in addition to a team shot (two shots/each because the trader cards I'm using are double-sided and I don't want to reuse or enlarge a portion of one on the front to go on the back). Never having posed soccer players before, if I had some visual references, that would help out tremendously.

Here's the front (on the left) and back (on the right) of the trader cards I'm going to use (the images of the player you see were downloaded from morguefile.com). I made this sample up to show the soccer moms at the practice last night.

[Curtis Cunningham]

Originally Posted by David_Buzzard

Those trees are going to be a big distraction...

What I haven't shown is the houses and building and busy highway on every other side of the soccer pitch. The trees are the biggest/most neutral background I can shoot against.

I can think of two other possibilities:

1. get on a ladder and shoot down at the players, using the grass as the background. I'm not sure how high I'd have to get to do this, either for the individual player or team shots.
2. bring my portable background kit to get a "cleaner" background.

Both would require a lot more work than I think needs to be done. And in the case of option #2, you'd lose the authenticity of an outdoor shot.

[Jason_Hoss]

Curtis,

Here is a typical pose that we throughout our youth sports programs. Another one would be to have them stand and photograph them 3/4 length.

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