Sports Photography by George Ross

Without a shadow of a doubt, my favorite style of sports photography is ‘panning’ a method of blurring the background while  maintaining focus on the subject. I find that this type of imagery ranks very high on the ‘wow factor’ but like most aspects of photography, it just takes a little understanding and a lot of practice. While the image in the wheel chair (below)  was taken with a modern digital SLR, the photograph of the motorcycle was shot in 1977 using a mechanical focal-plane shutter roll-film camera.  Entry level cameras were (in the UK) , typically,  Praktica single lens reflex roll-film (remember film?) cameras from East Germany,  with no automatic settings.

Craig Thompson, East Fortune racetrack, Scotland, 1977

Everything was manual and what a great way to learn ones craft using only manual settings. I use a different technique for panning now from when I used the Praktica, I don’t need to but I leverage technology (a.k.a. being lazy) but the technique used to shoot the motocycle was:

• pre-focus, manually, on the point in the road where I thought the motorcycle would pass
• set the shutter speed to 1/60th second
• because I was using ISO 200 film, there was little room to play with exposure
• take a few practice swings to get my body nice and smooth
• start tracking the motorcycle 50 yards before the pre-focused spot in the road and smoothly follow the bike with the camera and when it arrives at the pre-focused spot press the shutter but do not stop tracking the bike…follow through to keep your action, very, very smooth

I won my very first photography competition with this shot,  and my addiction to photography began, with earnest.

So, what’s different today? In digital SLR cameras we can adjust the ISO ratings to compensate for the weather playing havoc  with our exposures and secondly, with the advances in auto-focusing we can track moving obects without having to pre-focus which allows a little room for error. There is absolutely no reason why you should not still-pre-focus but that is simple a personal choice. I did not prefocus for the shot below, the camera did all the work. If your camera/lens combination cannot respond fast enough, don’t worry, just manually pre-focus…there are no excuses!

The shot below of Masazumi Soejima placing 2nd in the 2009 Boston Marathon wheelchair division,    was taken on a Canon EOS 40D with a 24mm to 70mm L series f/2.8 USM lens. the camera settings were

• aperture-priority
• 1/50th second
• ISO400
• f/18
• center-weighted metering
• focal length 70mm

Masazumi Soejima, 2009 Boston Marathon

The degree of ‘blur’ is controlled by the shutter speed and that will be relative to the speed of the moving oject. My rule-of-thumb is to start between 1/60th and 1/100. Why? No reason other than lots of experimentation and failure over the years and then adjust up or down. For some of my track and fiedl shots I lowered the shutter speed to 1/30th which produces totally radical results and while I plan on discussing that in later blog entries  – you can see some examples here  http://digitalphotoconcept.smugmug.com/Track-and-Field/2009-RITCA-Coaches/A-selection-of-the/10707444_bDXvH (scroll to the bottom of the gallery)

If you want spectacular sports shots, a bit different from the ordinary, then I recommend that you try panning. The rule-of-thumb is that the faster the object the easier it is to pan. Why? because the faster you pan the smoother will be your panning action.

It is likely that your first few attempts will be totally blurred, not worry just delete the image and try again. Practice does make perfect.