What makes a sports shot great

When it comes to shooting sports, there are many things that combine to make a great shot. Catching a great action shot or the turning point of a contest makes for a great shot. My favorite shots are those where you can see the determination in the eyes of a competitor. Here's a shot I took where you can see just that. What do you think makes a great shot and do you have any shots of anything I mentioned?

Here is one I shot Saturday. The quarterback handing off the ball

Here are a few of my son, I'm still learning. The one with him jumping was cropped, it was at the end of my 70-300. The other one was landscape but cropped it for portrait. I mostly shoot sports pictures of my boys.

Kevin,

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Love the one of him bunting. I've had the opportunity to shoot our college baseball team for the school paper and it's definitely a lot different than other sports I've shot. There isn't constant action like in basketball or football so you really have to be ready when something exciting happens.

Very true and thanks. I have to cover football, basketball, wrestling and baseball for my sons and baseball has been the most challenging. But thats what I love about, it has helped me learn so much in the way of photography. With each game I get a little better. I have taken so many pictures trying to get a ball connecting with the bat and have only captured 3 I think. Only one of my son, so thats kind of my trophy shot for baseball. Here it is, this was a challenging shot due to the light and location that I had to shoot from. Just wished I could have shot from the other side but that was shooting into the sun and from the other teams dugout, dont think they would have cared for that too much. That little baseball is hard to freeze without any blur, but I will get it.



D7000
ISO 200
F/5.6
1/1250
155mm

I shoot alot of sports for other people wanting to capture their child at their best. Also shoot for teams which is more challenging. When shooting for a person all your attention can be placed on one person all the time. So you can get every high point during a game of them. When shooting for a team. You constantly on the look out for a great shot. And yes its nearly impossible to catch all the high points because the action is all over the place.

I haven't done much sports photography at all. With my son just now starting to play ice hockey I plan to do more.

To me, what makes a great sports shot is a capture I can't see myself as a fan from the stands. I like to see action caught in such a way that you can just see the play/action taking place in the picture.

I'm going to add another layer for sports shots that I have been working on. The action is one thing but you also have to capture the emotions of the sport. The high fives, the tears and everything that goes with it. I few weeks back I added this new layer and it has been challenging.

This season I shot for the parents so I can learn to improve my technique, which I have, at least I think. I uploaded around 2000 pictures of the team in 46 baseball games. Sounds like a lot but I tried to keep it around a hundred or slightly more per game/tournament to not overload everyone.

Another thing, if you shoot for the parents dont expect all of them to ooh and awe, out of 11 kids I had 5 parents that would say something each time. The others never commented, no matter how hard I tried to get a special shot. This itself became a challenge.

Here is one of my son I got from the last tournament. I honestly love the challenge and have learned more about exposure and composistion then I would have by taking a couple here and there of various things. Even made the jump to full manual this season which I am very proud of.



And here is one more from the same tournament.
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I shoot a lot of of my son's american football games (Freshman team) which luckily are during the sunlight hours so I can go Sports mode and shoot very rapidly. I take about 450 pictures a game and due to the high volume of shots I get some really good ones each game. I also try to get a bunch of other shots to frame out the feel of the game beside action shots. The coin toss and handshakes, the pre-game pep talk where the whole team is on a knee, singing the school song after a victory, etc. It's been a great experience so far and the parents really appreciate it. I throw them all up on Flickr and then they can grab what they want.