The calm before the storm

[Homer]

O.K. this isn't a weather pictures and there are no thunderous clouds, but there is a quarterback getting ready to throw a pass with the storm coming. I took this shot during my son's football practice.

Jim

[Seb]

O.K. this isn't a weather pictures and there are no thunderous clouds, but there is a quarterback getting ready to throw a pass with the storm coming. I took this shot during my son's football practice.
Jim

Well I am not into sports photography and I must say that I don't care about football but I like how you have caught the action here. I think that this is busy in a good way with all the guys at different angles.

There are few points which I think could be worked:
The "thing" at the extreme left should be cropped or cloned out. Also, I'd try to work on contrast and/or color saturation to gives some extra punch to the scene. Finally, I wish that the players at the right weren't cropped but that's not such an issue and I understand that it must be hard to avoid.

Seb

[jbaldocchi]

You've caught the potential pain that comes with being blind sided, Ouch!

Jim B.

[Monster]

Great shot.

[Homer]

Thanks everyone for the comments. Seb, didn't crop the person along the left boarder completly out because I thought it would come to close to the player getting ready to bring down the thunder. I usually crop to 8X10's and try to leave enough space along the top and bottom so it could also be cropped into a 5x7 by parents. I guess though that I should crop differently when posting. I have to look at the original and see if I have more of what's happening on the right side. I appreciate the thoughts.

Jim

[Alison]

I'm not into sports photography either but I love what you captured here.
The colours and exposure are fanatstic! And as for the clarity...wow! Amazing!

It would be really nice to find out what camera, what lens and what settings you used for this.
Also, how far away from the players you were and did you use some sort of flash?
Did you use a tripod or was the camera hand held?

I still haven't cracked action shots and would LOVE to know how to achieve them.

[Homer]

Thanks Alison. I'm trying to start a business with sports action photography so I can retire from my real job.

I used a Minolta 7D with a 70-200 f2.8 lens, which I used hand-held for this shot. Normally I use a monopod, but I've been taking a lot of shots during my son's practice and just though I'd hand-hold it. This was taken around 4:30pm and no flash was needed. I believe I was approx 20'-30' from the players. This is during their practice and I'm allowed to get pretty close to the action.

Here's another shot taken the same day.

Jim

[Alison]

What were your settings? Your shutter must have been set pretty fast. These shots are fantastic!!!

[Homer]

When I shoot sports I set my camera to aperature priority. If I remember correctly my settings were f3.5 between 1/2000 to 1/3000 shutter speed. I normally set my camera to f2.8 but with the white uniforms by camera wanted to go faster than 1/4000 and my camera only goes to 1/4000, so I set the f-stop at 3.5 so I wouldn't have to worry about pictures being blown out.

Jim

[Alison]

Fantastic!
That info will help me so much for my children's Sports Day next year.
Thank you so much Jim!