SHS football

[ZL4life]

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these are some shots i took this fall of our hs football team.
C+C?? i have a feeling they're not bright enough
#1 I like this first one because of the block infront of him and the teammate finishing

#2

#3 the tigers strip the ball in this shot. i was covering it for the paper and two other senior photographers from the paper showed up just because they wanted to. they didn't use any of my shots, although this next photo was the exact moment that the writer said was the key momentum shift in the game leading towards the tigers victory. the other photographers just wanted their pictures in the paper even though theirs weren't any better than this one. o well

#4 back to my senior photograpers rant, one picture they did use was taken by the photographer who was standing right next to me, it was identical to this one, however because (for wahtever stupid reason) she was shooting at iso 1600, her's had a lot of noise, but they don't care. put em in!

[livin4lax09]

hey man...good shots, but don't complain too much about the senior photographers...sometimes the way it works out is just the people who are the oldest get the treatment.

theyre plenty bright, but flat as far as color goes. vibrance adjustment, curves, crushing your blacks, will all help. whites already look bright enough, as you're right on the verge of losing detail.

two more comments...

get lower. Shots aren't nearly as interesting when shot from usual eye height. What makes photos interesting a lot of the time is that the shot is from an angle that people aren't used to seeing.

You have to get faces. if you don't have faces, the shot isn't nearly as interesting because you can't see emotion. Shots from the back like your second shot rarely work, and only in very special circumstances where it was THE play and they want to highlight the play.

Also, don't be afraid to crop tighter. It helps to intensify the emotion. JS will disagree with me on this one, but I respect his opinion, and different photographers have different styles, but what I have been told by my "superiors" is that it's all about the emotion, and the tighter you go, the more intense it gets. Here's an example.


interesting image, yes. Good on some points, because you can see the struggle and how he is fighting against the entire team. but....



now you can see the determination in his face and the ferocity in the defender's face. which looks more intense?

[ZL4life]

it's funny, all of your sugestings are usually what i feel are my strong points. i almost always get low and i almost always crop tighter.
let me try to explain why i have them all the way i do.
the first one i have so much in the image just to show the other elements of the play. the teammate with the lead block and the teammate in the background finishing the block.
the second one i agree isn't the greatest, i thought it MIGHT work because it showed the open field in front of him.
the third one, i thought about cropping it tighter but for whatever reason, i didn't like how it looked.
i think the fourth one is pretty good.
i do appriciate all of your comments and if you want to play around with any of these shots feel free. i would like to see how you would pp things differently.

[JSPhoto]

I am not against cropping, I just don't take time to do it for here 99% of the time as I do have other things I have to do.
I rarely crop anything that goes to the paper though as they crop to fit the space available, or like yesterdays paper they used 4 shots from one game. One in the upper left hand corner of the front page, two on the front page of the sports section and the last inside the sports section. They broke the article up so they could run one of the photos as it took almost 1/4 of the page. On occasion I do crop them for the paper if I know ahead of time what they want. Some nights they tell me who to shoot and how they want them (vert or horizontal) and if the staff photog isn't on I'll crop them as the sports writers tend to mess up.

As for the senior getting published over you, thats normal, heck the papers staff photog used to use my worst shots so he'ed look better....hope he felt better Now though I email 4 or 5 shots from each event and he can't do that anymore He still tries to run them small though.....
Just get used to it, some day you'll be the senior.....

JS

[ZL4life]

I under stand about the seniors getting first crack at any photo. and i respect that. one of them is a great photographer. she's been doing it for 15 years and everyone couldn't be happier with her. the other guy, i'm not being mean, this is the truth. he's the worst photographer ever to call himself profesional. he does so many technical things wrong and so many compo things wrong that his pictures look terrible. he never uses a flash so his shots in low light are always noisy and motion blured. no contrast or color. i just have a problem with him, o well. i'm done now.

[JSPhoto]

hahaha, sounds like me with the staff photog at one paper....when I see he calls I let the machine get it...now if if I could get an autoresponder just for HIS email address

JS

[ZL4life]

ok, i'll trade with him. i'll be your staff photog and i'll make your guy come work for my senior photog. we'll have a great paper.

[JSPhoto]

They really need to hire me as the "night shift". Take today... just before 5pm I get a call to go shoot the state finals swimming downtown because the news side "forgot" they needed the staff photog downtown as well. News side wins out over sports. 10 minutes later they call back, switch me from the swimming to shoot two basketball games. They want me to go up the street for the first game then way south for the other. I suggested doing it the opposite...good thing as the game nearest my house went OT and started 1/2 hour later....Anyway I shot both games, gottem what they needed for tonights issue as well as the upcoming sectional issues for Monday and Tuesday of next week. And this "was" my night off.

This has been typical since they changed the sports dept. and added a second AND third writer. Instead of cutting me out as the "boss" wanted they need me just as much but ALWAYS at the last minute.....one of these days I won't be available, then what?

JS

[ZL4life]

yeah, i'd just not be avaliable one day. it might teach them not to take you for graned