The art and rules used in sports photography

Owens' Paige Wright drives to the basket in front of Mercyhurst's Aeriyelle Perrin during the Owens Express Tip Off Classic at Owens Community College. (PHO245   photos by Parth Pitroda)

   Sports photography is an art not everyone can do. It requires lot of patience and practice. When covering sports, you need to await the right moment to fire the camera, otherwise a live action shot could be missed. It is also important to know the rules and scoring method of the sport you are photographing, so you can catch the busy most crucial moments in that particular sport.     

   My experience photographing sports is nominal. Although there is a lot that can be learned in sports photography I found no interest in it. The highest useable ISO was 1600 which limited shutter speed to a maximum of 1/250sec. For this reason sports is harder than I expected it to be. There are many challenges which I faced, one of which includes focusing the camera on a fast moving subject.  Another is finding an interesting yet appropriate vantage point like capturing the coaches at a unique angle and getting a decent feature fan shot which still showed all the important content.  Nothing was enjoyable in this assignment because, I was not familiar with it. Overall, I feel sports photography is horrifying but it was a wonderful learning experience.

Fans watch the game.

Owens Women's Basketball Coach, Michael Llanas (10th year). No. 9 Owens Community College Express Owens Express Tip Off Classic Women's Basketball.