Photo Journalism

Photography is an art of capturing moments as they are describing something.

It includes various types of photography in which there is a branch called sports photography. Sports photography contain all sports. In the majority of cases, professional sports photography is a branch of photojournalism.

The main application of professional sports photography is for editorial purposes; dedicated sports photographers usually work for newspapers, major agencies or dedicated sports magazines. However, sports photography is also used for advertising purposes both to build a brand and as well as to promote a sport.

Sports photography uses a professional camera body and lens with a professional photographer. It uses digital single lens reflex (DSLR) Mirror less camera with high continuous shooting speeds and interchangeable lenses ranging from 14mm to 400mm or longer in focal length, depending on the type of sport.
Lens plays a very important role for photographers specially in sports photography as they allow the photographer to reach closer or farther as quickly as possible to keep up with the game play. Essential things include a tripod or monopod for stability and extra batteries in case of low battery. Longer focal length lenses are typically used to photograph action in sports such as football, while wide angle lenses can be used for sideline and close-up athlete photos.

The camera bodies preferred for sports photography must have high burst speed (typically 8fps) and fast autofocus and more autofocus points. For professional sports photography there are some popular cameras from Nikonand Canon named as the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II and the Nikon d5 .  As a non-professional, there are multiple other camera bodies to choose from.

Different sports favor different lenses, but sports photography usually requires fast (wide aperture) telephoto lenses, with fast autofocus performance. Fast autofocus is needed to focus on movement, telephoto to get close to the action, and wide aperture for several reasons like the background is dramatically put out of focus due to a shallow depth of field, resulting in better subject isolation. The lenses can focus more quickly due to the increase in light entering the lens which is important with fast-moving actions. Although faster shutter speeds can be used to freeze the action.

Extremely wide apertures (such as f/1.2 or f/1.4) are rarely used, because at these apertures the depth of field is very shallow, which makes focusing more difficult and slows down autofocus.

The main distinction is between outdoor sports and indoor sports  :-

• In outdoor sports the distances are greater and the light brighter.

• In indoor sports the distances are lesser and the lightis dimmer.

 Accordingly, outdoor sports tend to have longer focal length long focus lenses with slower apertures, while indoor sports tend to have shorter lenses with faster apertures.

Sports photographers may use remote cameras triggered by wireless shutter devices (i.e. Pocket Wizards) to photograph from places they could not otherwise stay, for example in an elevated position such as above a basketball basket, or to be in two places at once, like at the start and the finish of a race (such as at horse racing).

Important thing in this type of photography is knowing the game, predicting what happens next as the action moves fast so you have to be prepared before going out and taking photos.

To become expert in any field of photography, we should be professional and buy a camera on the basis of budget and features in it.

THANK YOU!

Sajal singh

BJMC-ii