2012 Ram Relays – Pole Vault

 Photography, Track & Field  No Responses »
Mar 312012
 

The pole vault presents it own unique set of challenges to the sports photographer. Like the high jump, the athlete will be facing one side or the other when they go over the bar. You will get a butt shot or a face shot. As with most photography, if you cannot see the eyes the photo is probably not worth keeping.

If you are on the right correct side of the pit then you have a chance of getting a good photo. If you are on the wrong side of the pit then not much reason to even press the shutter button. The pole vaulter will usually pivot around the pole as he goes up. This means that if the athlete starts down the runway with the pole on his right shoulder, you want to be on the opposite side to capture the photo. I have found it near impossible to switch from one side to the other once an athlete has taken his place on the runway.

Lighting is just as important to a good photo. Although it is possible to pull details from a poorly exposed photo, it is much better to get the exposure correct in-camera. Problem is you are almost always shooting up into a lit sky. If you cannot get the sun behind your back to light your subject, you will probably just get silhouettes going over the bar. Even with the correct light you must be sure to expose to the right but not to blow out the highlights in the sky. You want to see the fluffy cloud and the blue sky, not a white blob on a grayish background.

One of my best spots for getting pictures is right at the front of the pit next to the helpers who set the bar after each athlete. Shooting almost straight up at the athlete makes even a low bar setting look impressive with clouds as the only background. I have a couple of those shots in this small collection.

Pole Vault

2012 Ram Relays – High Jump

 Photography, Track & Field  No Responses »
Mar 312012
 

I never get as many shots as I would like of the field events. The running events are scheduled and announced. Field events just happen. If you walk away from the Shot Put area to go get some photos of the Pole Vault, someone you wanted to photograph may have their turn and be done for the day before you get back.

High jump is no exception. It along with the Pole Vault are even more difficult because the top athletes will sit out of the competition until the bar gets raised to higher standard. I come back to the pits during the day only to miss the athletes when they finally take their turns.

High Jump

This image is a composite of 5 seperate images. I think it turned out pretty well. My ideal set up if I was to plan to do a shot like this would be to

  • set the camera on Manual mode so that the exposure would not change between images
  • set the camera’s field of view wide enough to capture all five images without having to move the camera
  • set the camera on a tripod so the images are all aligned to start with and not require so much hand work
  • read my camera manual to find out how to have the camera automatically take 5 shots (if it’s even possible)

2012 Ram Relays – Shot Put

 Photography, Track & Field  No Responses »
Mar 312012
 

Slowly finishing up the shots from last week’s Ram Relay at West Valley High School in Yakima. I took about 250 photos of the various field events but will probably eliminate almost half due to various reasons. I am not too picky but the photo does have to be in focus (usually not a problem), not blurred (sometimes a problem), but also need to see a face. If the face is not visible then the photo has to be exceptional in some other way to make the cut.

First of the field events is the Shot Put. I noticed the a nice timed sequence on 2 sets of the photos so played with them in Photoshop to create something a little different.

Shot Put

Shot Put

I may have to take my tripod to a meet and see if I can get some wider shots and do a better job on aligning the images. Enjoy!