Cropping

Been receiving a couple of messages regarding sports photography lately.

The questions that pop up invariably revolve around: -

1) What lens did you use?
2) What camera did you use?
3) Do you use the centre Auto Focus point all the time?

Cutting to the chase, yes, technique and equipment are important, but what makes or breaks a sports photo (most of the time anyway) lies in the first and possibly most important step in post-processing: cropping.

Here's an uncropped frame from a 300mm capture: -


And the cropped version:


Whilst some would disagree, it's sports photography - not fine art - there just ain't many excuses for a loosely cropped photograph.

Rugby

Sulking on the sidelines with a super telephoto lens is one (boring) way to shoot field sports, with cookie-cutter results - limited depth-of-field and tightly cropped photographs.

The M1 Women's 7s rugby carnival, held on a fine Saturday morning at the Yio Chu Kang stadium presented an ideal opportunity to try going 'wide' - but without the awkwardness of juggling multiple cameras - by installing the wide angle lenses on floor remotes.

Only problem is, with only two remote cameras to spare and a huge expanse of ground to cover, the chances of a remote camera capturing a slice of the action is... well... really remote.

Nonetheless, some 20 minutes later a portion of the field (try area) was staked out by two remote cameras, a 20D and 30D coupled with 10-22mm and 17-55mm lenses respectively.

Since it is a 7s game, well, tries should be a plenty. They just have to score in the right areas!

Out of the 90 frames captured, one of them is useable (barely): -

It's pretty much a game of patience and numbers - set up the remotes often enough and once in a while something nice should pop up.

You're a Star!

When it comes to star jumps... there's no better option than the NTU ACES Cheerleading team. With three back-to-back national cheerleading championships, these guys are without a doubt the best in the business.

Upon chancing on a photography competition organised by Budget low-cost airline Jetstar titled "Perfect Star Jump" The requirements are simple enough: An eye-catching star jump image.

A phone call and a couple of weeks later, Jessilyn, Ian, Mun Chun, Kelvin and I were sweating it out at the NTU Sports and Recreation field doing (the cheerleaders, not me) countless basket tosses.

All-in, we squeezed out 34 frames (and a couple more test shots) before calling it a day. The cheerleaders would have gone on for a couple more tosses, but I was on the verge of collapsing from heatstroke... =P

Edit: Unfortunately this image did not make it into the judges shortlist. But the enthusiasm shown during the shoot is something that I'll always remember.

- KP

Serve and Volley

The synthetic hard court was baking in the morning sun by the time we arrived at NIE for a photoshoot of the men's volleyball team from NTU Hall of Residence Seven.

Sun 1 Strobe 0

It was way too glaring for anything productive and we beat a hasty retreat to the indoor gymnasium. A pity; an outdoor shoot would have been nice.

The individual portraits were taken...


Followed by a little bit of exercise...


And a quick set-up change with two flagged strobes lighting up the tallest player in the Hall 7 squad.

'Chip'

Another shoot with the NTU ACES, although this was more of a clean-up session: some graduating members of the team weren't present a couple of weeks ago.

The weather did not favour allow for an outdoor shoot, so it was back to the safe (but a tad boring) pose against white white/gray-ish backdrop wall shots.

Nevertheless, Agnes (otherwise known as 'Chip') proved to be a revelation; it took only three attempts to get the SOTD (ok ok, Shot-of-the-Day, i made it up on the fly).

Shot 1 - The basic idea



Shot 2 - Almost there, pointy toes, pointy toes!



Shot 3 - SOTD



Here's a quick 'n dirty look at the set-up:



EOS 30D
EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

AcuteB600 w/ Softlight Reflector White
2 x 580EXII (Background lights, Flagged)
1 x SB-80DX (Rim light, Flagged)

3 x PW Multimax, 2 x PW Plus II Radio Triggers

5-6-7-8

Who DOESN'T like photographing cheerleaders?

Photogenic, flexible and not the least bit camera shy... =D

Mun Chun: -

As promised, a few of the 'outtakes'.

Enjoy!

A Branch Too Far

Cherie was also with us @ the Botanical Gardens on Saturday and to keep up with the 'sports' theme, we had her vault over this low hanging tree branch...

... which has been smoothed over by generations of kids sliding their asses all over it.

Repeatedly.

Unfortunately it was a branch too far (or too high, to be precise) and the idea was probably half-baked to begin with.

Kudos to the model for enduring so much abuse... I hope the knee and bum aren't as sore as on Sunday... =P

Mucho gratias!

Water Parade

This photo has been in the back of my head for sometime after catching a glimpse of it while browsing through a magazine.

It's shot by Danish photographer Erik Refner and clinched 1st Prize in the World Press Photo Awards for 2007, Sports Features Stories.

Been wanting to steal replicate emulate this image for a while, and wasted no time when a kind soul (Thanks Charlene!) volunteered to get wet, and really hot, for this shot.

So we trooped down to good old Botanics @ 1600hrs. All thoughts of a quick and easy shoot literally evaporated into the 40°C-like heat and a blazingly bright f/22 background.

We lucked out though, with full power pops from the AcuteB600 barely registering f/22 on the lightmeter.

There wasn't a marathon to establish the scene.

But we had water.

Lots of it...

And as we found it, it takes considerable skill to splash water on someone's face.

The end result certainly isn't anywhere near the original, but we had a splashing (pun intended) good time.

And boy does the water taste sweet after an hour long shoot in the sun.