action – Earl Shilton Camera Club

Articles Tagged with: action

26/10/2014

Action Photography

Following on from Landscape we have POTY 2 – Action : This quest of capturing and conveying motion is collectively called action photography. Action photography demands lightning-quick reflexes, a solid foundation in composition and other photo elements, and a little bit of luck.

Freeze the Action – The world around us is in motion but a photograph is a still medium, a good shot freeze’s the action, and obviously it need’s to be sharp

Being more Creative – The better image goes beyond just freezing the action. and seeks a creative way of capturing and conveying this motion to the viewer.

Faces – If the image includes a person you need to see their face or more specifically their eyes and the expression.

Balls – If the image shows some one jumping to catch a ball or to kick a ball you need to see the Ball and not just the attempt as this gives meaning to the image.

Focus– the main subject of the image should be in sharp focus. However, sometimes motion blur can be used effectively to show motion.

Lighting/Exposure – the subject should be easily visible and not hidden in a deep shadow or lost in the highlights.

Background – the background should not be a distraction from the main subject of the photo.

Colour – the colour of the subject should be natural. It can be very easy, especially when shooting indoors under certain kinds of lights, to produce a shot where the white balance is substantially off and people have a greenish or other color cast to them.

Subject size – the main subject should fill a substantial portion of the photo; there should not be a large amount of excess space around the subject.

Distractions – items that detract from the main subject or action should be cropped out of the picture.

Noise – the picture should not be overly noisy or grainy. Excess noise is almost always a result of shooting at high ISOs or underexposing an image. Sometimes shooting at high ISOs is unavoidable (indoor sports, for example) in order to get a high shutter speed, but there are ways of reducing this noise during final processing of the picture. However, noise reduction can be overdone resulting in a “plastic” quality to people in the picture and should be avoided.