Hello everyone. Yesterday it was the first time for me shooting sports. It was Volleyball. How the *** do professionals get solid photos with all the faces, people running around, athletes getting in your shot while you are focused on a subject, limited space etc? I took around 1300 photos. Only like 300 of them are usable. It was extremely tough anticipating the ball and trying to capture the action. And when I did… the faces… Oh my god. And not only that… it was women playing…you can imagine how many of the photos they will like. Some are pretty good athletic photos not gonna lie. And to my defense I had only one lens a 24-105 f/4. I am waiting for the new Sigma for Sony mount. I think it will help a lot. Anyway I would love some advice. Thank you.
Edit: By saying it was women I wasnt trying to be sexist at all. But my girlfriend was playing and when see saw the photos she would look at every minute detail of her body.
Always think quality over quantity.
300 usable photos is a solid amount. When I started shooting sports, I felt like I HAD to have as many photos as possible of as many people as I could, that was until I got some advice from a seasoned sports photographer I knew and he told me that you’re the only person who a) sees/knows how many photos you took in total and b) gets to edit the good photos and delete the bad ones. This means that even if you only have one good shot of each player on the volleyball court, you’re the only one who’s going to know, and nobody is going to care if there’s a good shot of everyone.
The beauty of sports is that it’s highly repetitive more often than not, so you have hundreds of attempts to get the good shots. You’ll pick up bad shots at every event you shoot, even the best photographers do (you just don’t have the privilege of seeing them!).