Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/01/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Ken Wilcox wrote >BTW-What is wrong with including half the court in the shot? Most of us who shoot sports like the shots to be very tight and show the key action/emotion and nothing else. This makes the photo "read" much quicker. The best photos are when you catch the players either fouling heavily, or loosing the ball, or creating some other mistake, or when they are doing some very intense thing with their face, ex: Michael Jordan bites his tongue when concentrating on making the last second game winning shot (of course he bites his tongue all the time, but it adds a bit of intensity to the image). I have made one good action image at basket ball with a 20 mm lens and this was when a North Carolina player was diving out of bounds literally on top of me for a loose ball in a game against Ga. Tech the year Tech went to the final 4. The player was full frame, so you can imagine how close he was to me. Made a nice different perspective. This is why I always keep a wide lens ready to shoot when shooting sports, if you are going to eat it any way you may as well get a nice frame off before getting slammed. As in any photography the thing that "makes" the photo is emotion, action, and use of light. If you can combine nice light with a strong emotion, and use the light to enhance the emotion and you have some kind of action, (or lack of action--which can be telling depending on your subject) you will have a strong image as long as it is large enough in the frame to "read". Too loose and you lose the impact. Also, IMO, it is better to have it tight on the film than to crop the negative to be tight. Harrison McClary http://people.delphi.com/hmphoto