A Fun Week In Sports Photography

This was a fun week making sports photos. I made photos at three soccer matches and one volleyball match. This is the time of year when I am knocking the rust off when it comes to these sports. I don’t photograph a ton of soccer and volleyball, and it is always good to get some reps in to remember just how to do it. These posts can have photos that I have made several days before in them. If you want to see what I am up to in much more real time you can follow me on Instagram at @pinolaphoto.

A Hot Start

The week started off with a hot soccer match on turf. The game was moved up to avoid the heat, but it still came into play. In fact the photo above was my favorite of the day, and it was made after the match was called due to heat. The emotion is real as the players are happy for the game to be over. I was getting overheated just standing on the sidelines. I could not imagine having to run and exert on that turf. I really was not happy with this match. I had to try every trick that I knew to avoid the heat waves ruining my photos, and they still kept coming into play.

A Familiar Face In Goal

I will admit that I don’t always know everyone’s name when I roll up to a game. I always try and make some goalie photos early if I can to make sure that I have some. I always feel bad about it, but you want to be on the opposite side of the pitch most of the time to get the goals and the celebrations. In a one sided match the goalie might rarely touch the ball. When I saw Morgan I had the thought that I knew her. It dawned on me that I had photographed her as a toddler at the preschool my oldest went to. It is a weird thing that has started to happen where I know a lot of the athletes on the field. It is also a pretty cool thing to see good kids doing good things.

Telling A Story

One thing that I want to work on this year is getting better at storytelling. That means not always being tight on the action. Sometimes it means pulling out a bit to show more of the scene. I really like these photos as they help me show more of what was going on that day.

Good Light And Goals

I will admit that I went to this game because of the conditions. I knew the light would be good, and the wet turf would give me some nice photos backlit. In fact I spent the entire match shooting backlit. I was not there for anyone. The team has photographers that do the banners and the action shots. I was just there to have a little fun. I was aiming for a few photos that would show the beauty of the night. I was really happy with what I was able to get. This field is great early in the year when the sun is going down. I don’t know how much I will be able to get back because of my schedule, but it was nice to get a game in here with the light on my side.

Lots Of Goals

The story of this week in soccer was lopsided wins. Luckily for me the team that I was photographing was on the good side of those wins. That meant lots of celebration photos. I loved these backlit celebration photos. They might not be for everyone, but they make me happy.

Another Blowout

I went out to the Harrison soccer field Wednesday night to kind of have a better day than I did on Saturday. I didn’t think my images were the best from the match. The conditions played a huge part in that. The heat makes photography much harder. Wednesday night was milder and on grass where I could have some fun. The muted light helped a lot as well. I ended up with a set of images that I really liked, and saw another blowout.

A New Toy

I made this photo with a new lens that I added this week. It is the Sony 50-150mm f/2. It was pricey, but for what I do it makes a ton of sense. When things were slower I sold my old 70-200mm lens. I was not using it much, and I knew that the money would be better used somewhere else. The f/2.8 was not good in a lot of the gyms I end up in. This new lens should help with that a little. I will have more on that later in a big test for it.

High Five

I love these photos. The players are battling, but they still find time to give each other a high five for a job well done. At least that is what I always tell myself they are going.

A Real Test For The Sony 50-150

I went to Harrison Thursday night to test out my 50-150. Part of the reason I decided to sell it a couple of years ago was that it didn’t work like I would want it to in the gyms that I photograph in. I was just not using it. I know what my lenses do in the main gym so this would be a good test with the new lens. Imagine my surprise when I found out the match was played in the old gym. In some gyms the light is bad, but your eyes don’t really notice it. In this old gym your eyes even tell you that the light is bad. Like really bad light. This would be a rough night to make photos, but a really good test for the capabilities of this lens. It was better than I could have imagined, and I realized that I made a good decision to buy it.

Getting Up To Speed With Volleyball

Volleyball is a fast sport. Out of everything that I photograph it might just be the hardest one to make good images. It is fast and you have to be faster to already be on the player. I am still not the best at volleyball, but I am getting there. Every year I feel like I make a little better images than the previous year. Even in this bad gym I was able to anticipate and make some images that I liked. This was a very one sided win as well. I would love to photograph this team during a tough match when the points are more important. They had some good celebrations in this match, but I bet that they would become amazing when the stakes are higher. I will have to try and find out when that match will be.

Using The Gym

Like I said above I don’t make photos in this gym very often. When I realized that this senior was serving in a spot to make this photo I quickly slid down to make it. I don’t know how many games they will play in this gym, but I wanted to capture this while I could.

The Return Of Friday Night Lights

This week I photographed my first football of the year. I usually feel much more rusty on game one, but maybe because I stayed busy this week I seemed to be more on it. After the speed of volleyball the night before football didn’t seem as fast. It is hard to believe that it has been 32 years since I last put on the pads. That seems like a lifetime ago. It is still fun to get out there and make photos and try and remember what it was like back then.

Friday Night Light

Early in the season you get a lot of good light during the game. I spent most of the second quarter of this game playing with the setting sun. Both teams have a ton of photographers that are giving them regular game images. That frees me up to try and make something interesting. Here I was rooting for the run to come right at me with this beautiful light streaming into the frame. I got my wish and made something different. I really like how this turned out.

Zooming Out A Little

My time without a long lens at games helped me see these images a little better. At one point my longest lens when the sun went down was my 135mm. I had to get creative to make photos. I like to pepper the gallery with these scene setter photos. I already had a ton of images of the running back for West Side that were tight. A wide one kind of changes things up a little.

Win #1

This was the first game for new Harrison coach Kyle Holderfield. That made the win also the first for him. I positioned myself amongst the team for his postgame speech to them. I had this idea for a photo of him with a sea of orange in front of him. When the team gave him the Gatorade treatment I was in the perfect spot to capture it. I could have gone in tighter, but I like the team all reacting around him.

The Little Things

I like this photo for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is a nice photo of a senior that I have been photographing since his freshman year. I like the action in it, and it would have made the gallery no matter what. The thing that really makes it nice for me is the reflection in the visor. You can see once West Side player waiting to tackle him and the goalline behind him. You get a lot of information added to the photo in that reflection. You sort of get his view of situation which is always fun.

Details

This year I really want to focus on going wider for the whole scene as I talked about above. I also like the idea of zooming in to find little details like in the photo above. A good action gallery is one thing. What helps break up the action are the little detail shots like in the photo above. I have always considered my job to be to take the person in the stands onto the field. These little moments that are hard to see from up above really help me do that.

Only I Might See This

When I put a photo on Instagram I usually have a reason for it. Sometimes the photos are so small on there that my reason might not be obvious. I really like this as an action shot, but the word kill on the defenders wrist tape took this from a good photo to one that I really liked. It is a small detail that on an app I might be the only that knows it is there, but it still was a fun find for me.