Lights, camera, action!

InMaricopa.com is pleased to be bringing you, on a regular basis, timely, useful and informative articles by a wide variety of local experts. This is the second in a series of articles on photography and useful picture taking techniques.

It’s soccer season again here in the ‘Copa, and we’ve been spending our weekends photographing the local kids in action. It’s great to see our neighbors and friends out on the sidelines, cheering on their kids in this wonderful fall weather.

I see more and more cameras at the games every season. I hope everyone is getting sweet shots, but it’s not an easy feat. We are all ready and waiting to photograph our children when they finally escape from that shin-kicking huddle and make a break for the goal. And, hopefully, it’s the right goal. But when that blessed moment finally comes, do you have what it takes to capture that moment successfully?

“Successfully” is the key word here: you want the subject to be in focus, sharp, and with the proper light exposure (not too dark or too light). And perhaps, with a bit of luck, they are actually frozen in an aggressive action-figure pose. Hopefully their eyes are open, and they are looking either A.) brave B.) cute C.) determined or D.) happy to be alive.

So many elements have to come together at the same time in order to make you smile when the image pops up on your camera’s viewfinder. Here is my list of tips for taking super action shots:

1. A long zoom lens. The bigger the field, the longer the lens you will need. A zoom lens allows you to zoom in and out as the action moves toward or away from you. When I photograph my daughter on the 4- and 5-year-old field, I can do well with my 70-200 mm lens. If I’m shooting the older kids on that vast acre of green, I would do better with a 400 mm lens. But I do not have that size of lens because I could buy a second car for the same price. So I try to shoot those players when they are closer to me, and I am always moving around to stay close to the action. Now if your lens isn’t very telephoto, and you can’t get close to the action, you can still get crisp shots of your kids even if they look like ants in the frame. When you drop your pictures into your editing program, just crop in tight on the subject. You will most likely be able to pull off a sharp 5X7 or 8X10 if the subject is in focus. That brings me to my next tip…

2. Auto-Focus. Although I recommend MANUAL exposure, I do not recommend manual focus. Put your lens on AUTO-FOCUS and learn how to adjust the focusing point so that you can lock into you subject and fire away, like Tom Cruise locked-on to those bogies in “Top Gun.”

3. Fast shutter speed. The shutter speed needed depends on how fast the subject is moving. I would aim for around 1/500 second, but somewhere between 1/250 – 1/1000 of a second will most likely be needed, depending on how fast they are cruising around. The older kids need a faster shutter speed than the little tikes.

Don’t know what a shutter speed is, how to adjust it, or where to find it on your camera? That’s another lesson in itself. Shooting your camera in AUTO isn’t going to cut it 99 percent of the time with action shots. Even if you put your camera on the little running man mode, the camera won’t give you the results you can achieve using the MANUAL mode and understanding shutter speed and other exposure variables… all of which we cover in my Picture Perfect photo course by the way. (Hint, hint.)

4. Get low. The first three are more requirements than suggestions. It will be hard to get good action shots from the sidelines without a long zoom lens on AUTO-FOCUS and a fast shutter seed. The fourth is a personal preference. Try sitting down and shooting up at the kids. In my opinion it makes for much better photos. The kids look more heroic and it puts us into their world.

In conclusion, hip, hip hooray for kids playing sports instead of playing video games — definitely a monumental feat that deserves successful documentation.

Jake Johnson of Jake Johnson Pictures is a Maricopa-based photographer who also offers classes in photographic techniques. He can be reached at 602-291-1093 or via e-mail at [email protected].

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