I’ve never thought of myself as much of an athlete. Even though playing sports has been a consistent part of my life from childhood through today, I always viewed myself as more of a grinder. For me, any kind of achievement on the playing field has always come through brute force of will rather than any type of athletic prowess. My “official” athletic career came to an inauspicious end in high school. Despite a few tepid exploratory calls from basketball recruiters at the lowest tier of the college hierarchy, I never really imagined myself as a college athlete and I left organized sports behind me and moved on.
With that history in mind and a wife who, at best, has a mild tolerance for sports, I never thought our family was likely to produce future collegiate athletes. Fast forward twenty years to Shani and I spending our Saturday afternoons at various sports complexes watching our middle son holding his own as a freshman sprinter for York College. Who knew?
I don’t think it’s ungenerous to say that neither my wife nor I would have ever listed “being fast” as one of our defining attributes. Quite the opposite. That’s why it’s doubly surprising that Jacob moves as quickly as he does down his lane in the 100 and 200 meter dashes. What I do know is that he’s a hard worker who puts his nose to the grindstone when a goal is put in front of him. Whatever we shorted him genetically, he more than makes up for in effort and determination.
Oh right, this is a photography blog. Sorry, let’s talk about that for a little bit. When our son was in high school track, I had my hand-dandy school district photographer pass that allowed me access to the interior of the track so I had my choice of all kinds of clean backgrounds and leading lines. Sadly, the various universities we travel to do not recognize the laminated authority of our local high school, so I am relegated to less compositionally desirable areas outside of the fence. Getting a distraction-free background from these spots is hard. So many athletes in the infield milling about sullying my precious out of focus areas!
Busy backgrounds aside, if you’re capturing a mid-day meet, your camera settings tend to be pretty standard for shooting action. Fast shutter speeds, high speed burst mode, and the widest aperture you can muster along with continuous auto focus mode (in my Canon’s case, AI Servo) usually gets the job done. The difficulties I run into (no pun intended) in track and field photography tend to be of the framing variety. Panning your camera with the athletes and keeping all the important limbs and what-not in frame can be challenging. I’ve thrown away so many shots of athletes missing the tops of their hands (long jump,) or the top of someone’s head (hurdles.) It definitely takes some reps to get things going in your favor in that regard.
The good news for track photography is that unlike other sports, you always know where the athletes are going to end up. I think that makes it great sport to shoot if you’re just getting into sports photography. It allows you to master your settings and technique without having to worry about unexpectedly moving your camera in anticipation of where the action is going to take place.
When Jacob is ultimately done with college, my foray into sports photography will also most likely come to an end. The pure joy of capturing and cheering on my sons doing something they love is one of the best rewards of parenthood. As for me, for someone who never expected to be on the collegiate field of play in any fashion, even though the backgrounds are messy, I’m delighted and proud that I’m still on the sidelines for one last go.
Photo Gallery – Collegiate Track & Field
You might also like
Leave a reply