From high-speed action to the rawest of emotion, few genres offer the diversity and challenges of sports photography. Here, we share a few tricks to get you off the sidelines and in the thick of it.
If you’re developing an interest in sports photography, then you and Al Bello start in the same place. Al who? You may well be wondering. Well, to use a well-known phrase from the last Australian election, “Google it, mate!”
I’ll give you a heads up. Al Bello is one of the great sports shooters of modern times, and for a long period was the chief photographer at Getty USA. He is also one of a collection of sports shooters whose images I regularly check to see where sports imaging is headed.
I mention this because not only are his images inspirational, but they should also give you lots of ideas, and that’s where any good photography starts. Every great sports shooter has to start somewhere, just like Al did. So, let’s get started.
1 THE IDEA
Every photograph in every genre starts with an idea. Why pick up a camera if you don’t have an idea behind doing so?
Your idea could be as simple as getting a sharp photo of a sporting event, or something more complex like creating a photographic essay with a sporting theme. My work has evolved around photojournalistic
