West Texas Relays 2007

[ken1953]

Hello all, 2 weekends ago, I had the honor to shoot the West Texas Relays. This is one of the oldest and largest Track and Field events in Texas. The company I was shooting for, www.leavethecamera.com had been approached by the Chamber of Commerce to be the official photographers for the event. It was my first professional job. I shot over 3000 photos during the 2 day event. There were like 50 schools and over 1500 athletes. We only had 2 other photographers besides myself and one was only a half day on Saturday.
Anyway, here are 4 of my favorites. I would really be interested in your opinions on how I did for a first time. If you want to check out more, go to the link above or below and check out WTR or Sundwall Photography.
Hope you like them.
Ken

[Homer]

Well I think you did a nice job for the first time. These appear to be straight out of the camera, if not I would have like to see them with a tighter crop.

For your first one, is this a long or triple jump. With this angle and such an open shot there's a lot of distractions with the background. It appears that you were pretty close to the action. A suggestion would be to shoot with your widest aperture to limit your DOF and blur the background more. Same with the second shot. It's just a matter of opinion but I like these coming towards the camera or just a slight angle off to the side to get a better expression.

Jim

[ken1953]

Hi Homer, Thanx for the advice. Since I first read your post a few days ago, I decided I'd look at some of the other posts to understand better what you were saying and compare mine to theirs. I can see what you mean about the DOF and yes, I also think that a softer bokeh would have worked better.
As my first "Official Photographer" job, I had full access to all areas and YES I got real close. I have some great head on shots as well. These were some of my favorites though, and Yes...they were straight out of the camera. The main focus for this shoot was to sell to parents, relatives and friends, with the prime focus on the face and school colors. I was shooting in TV priority mode for the first time. My friend who hired me, gave me a quick lesson just before the shoot. So, I got a ways to go.
I hope to get many more of these jobs this summer. Maybe by the end of the summer I will be in a league with some of the better sports photogs here...
If you want to check out more, click on my link in my signature.
Take care and again, thanx for the input.
Ken