Learning Action Photography

Torrential rain dominated the Mount Maunganui Club Rugby Sevens Tournament

2010-02-02T02:03:00.000-08:00

I'm told this is the largest club sevens tournament in New Zealand with 32 teams competing.

This is my rugby club so I usually help put tents up first thing and then lend a hand on the barbeque, chopping onions and selling the traditional Kiwi snack for such occasions - the 'sausage in bread'. But we didn't sell many this year as the crowds stayed away due to the weather.

Typically, tents are erected to provide shade for the players because late January is the heat of summer but this year it was all about sheltering from the pouring rain brought in by the Easterly Wind.

There were floods in the area due to the 115mm of water that fell in the 24hrs between 6am Sunday and 6am Monday.

Some of the players didn't seem to mind. The team from Galatea were enjoying themselves.

Others took it in their stride

Some supporters braved the weather

I'm still struggling with my focus or my composition. I'm letting the camera do the work and trusting the quantity to yield quality. I see professional photographers running through their shots during breaks in play so I assume they do some of this but I also assume it's not as bad as me.

One issue is that I'm never sure which shots I'm going to use. Some are for RugbyHair, others for AtTheSevens, some are for CrapRefs - but not many - others are just in case and they hang around on my hard drive taking up space so I need to do more homework, planning and focus my efforts.

This one was a little better

There were a couple of good hair and crowd shots.

Locals manned the BBQ under shelter of a large tent

I didn't want to get my equipment wet and so took shelter most of the day, shooting what I could fro the BBQ tent where the story was the rain ...

Eventually, those in low-lying areas had to abandon their stations

And head for higher ground

Four Nations International Sevens Rugby Tournament

2010-02-02T01:08:00.000-08:00

It was a hot day in Auckland when the College Rifles Rugby Club hosted their annual Sevens tournament in mid January. The event has a grand title but this is it's second year and there were just 8 of the planned 12 teams competing.

That said, the venue is very well appointed for hosting Sevens Rugby and the standard of play was high.

The Venue

There is a shaded area for the players and grass verges on both sides of the main field.

Players area

I was trying out a video-based Panorama application for the iPhone. It is a novel and quick way to take panorama photos. It uses the video camera and all you have to do is start recording, pan around the shot you want and then stop it when you are done.

The output resolution is average but no criticism to the developers, it's just that the video camera resolution on the iPhone is considerably less than that of the new camera (VGA, 400 x 600) so the application doesn't have that much to work with.

That said, the output is fine for web-sharing of scenes that don't require close-up.

View from the grass verge on the far side of the main field.

Behind the goalposts of the main field.

The surface

The playing surface is astroturf and it is treated with small fines of rubber to make it playable. It made for an interesting effect when tread on by players in motion.

It left a tell-tale splash effect one pace behind players.

The supporters

There were some pretty girls

And one pretty boy ... well, he was in good shape.

Third outing ...

2009-09-07T14:20:00.001-07:00

Another evening rugby game. We couldn't get very close to the playing surface but were among the hometown fans and so were able to get several useful shots.

Again, we ran into some luck at the gate as a local fan had one too many tickets and so kindly gave the spare to us.

There were 1-2 interesting hair styles:

There was also some dreadlocks in action that we managed to capture.

And some colorful local fans ...

As a spectacle, it was a pretty one-sided affair

It is nice to be going along to these games. Rugby is our national sport. It is alive and well in the provinces with many loyal supporters turning out to cheer on their team. There are young people and children enjoying the occasion.

Second outing ...

2009-08-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

Day Two: Bay of Plenty vs Waikato - (New Zealand) NPC Rugby match, Saturday 22 August 2009

I was lucky enough to have gotten press accreditation to take photos from the side of the playing surface at BayPark Stadium in Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, NZ.

The weather was great so no excuses. I took over 500 individual shots and the camera performed very well.

Dodgy moustache from the Bay of Plenty Steamers captain, Colin Bourke

A crowd of 18,000+ turned out for the match

First effort with a decent camera (Canon EOS 50D)

2009-08-27T17:56:00.000-07:00

Day One: North Harbour vs Northland - (New Zealand) NPC Rugby match, Friday 21 August 2009

We took an express bus from downtown Auckland to the match venue (a short walk from the bus stop). It was a quick ride for a busy city and a nice clear evening for the match.

We hadn't bought tickets and so were pleasantly surprised when a guy approached us at the back of the cue with 2 tickets he didn't need - for free. It wasn't an expensive match ($NZD 15 each) but it was a very nice gesture all the same and it made for a great start to the evening.

Together with Petr, we took 367 photographs on the Canon EOS 50D with Canon EFS 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS [Image Stabilizer] telephoto lens.

We used the 'action' setting and were quite happy with the results.

There were a lot of shockers and some disappointments (where we got a shot that was nowhere near as good as it could have been).

But overall, we were able to get useful shots from the grandstand of a rugby match (and other areas we could get to that were close to the pitch - like behind the goalpost at one end).

Here's a (very basic) photo essay of the first outing with the camera.

First view of the stadium, walking from the bus stop

Fans are let onto the ground to meet the players after the game in a nice touch. Most are happy to endure a short interview.

Day Two is tomorrow in Tauranga where I will be on my own.

Getting into sports photography

2009-08-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

My business partner (Petr) and I felt we needed to take good quality sports action photos in order for the creative aspect of a couple of online projects to launch successfully.

[clearly there are a number of critical success factors for any online venture, this part is concerned with carrying off the creative concept]

RugbyHair.com is currently on the WordPress blog platform, awaiting a much-needed design make over which will coincide with a platform change so that we can push the concept forward by having

The ability to receive people’s uploaded photos and video
Ad serving ability
Flexible layouts

Essentially, we need to be able to effectively convey the idea of the site and motivate/stimulate/enthuse the viewer into contributing (reviews, ratings, upload their own shots, enter competitions).

Enter: Need for good action photos

The concepts for the sites were fairly simple so it is the ability to go live with a great array of high quality photos and video that we are hoping will carry things off.

Photographic experience

Our experience has been limited to mostly compact digital cameras. The results were average (static subjects only) but OK for use online.

Before getting a ‘real’ camera

The compact camera I was using was incapable of getting anything like the quality of action photo that we were looking for (some of the better examples appear below – not great).

Some of the close-up photos from the compact were at least legible.

Video (for online consumption) was also OK for our purposes.

Sample here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWOhH0Q9btI

I had a JVC Everio hard drive model and an earlier Panasonic DV digital camera so I was happy enough with our video-taking capabilities for the moment.

Content up until now

We got enough material to begin a content-discovery process for RugbyHair.com. Basically, I needed to see how things would work out

What the main areas of the site should be
How to position things to create some longevity to some of the material; and, at teh same time,
How to report on current events

We had general ideas around the type of content we wanted on the site but weren’t sure of the exact make-up. We decided to embark on a free blogging platform, work on the content from there and then move to a more feature-rich platform when we had sufficient content and clearer idea of the structure etc.

Then we would be in a position to explain the concept and pitch for advertisers, sponsors, etc.

Proof of Concept

On the first outing with (what I assume is) a half-way decent camera (Sony DSC-H5), we were able to take some reasonable shots (for online use) just from the grandstand.

Examples from the initial outing (with cropping):

More here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rugbyhair/

Camera Selection

It sounded like Canon and Nikon made reasonable-to-high quality cameras in the range of ‘upper amateur’ to ‘early professional’ capability.

My capability was certainly not ‘upper amateur’ but the idea was to grow into the equipment as we went. We had planned to be at several events in the coming months and so would get a lot of live practice.

I found this article very informative in terms of beginning to understand the core features.

I won’t get into all of the considerations when pondering the purchase of a DSLR. The important ones for us were:

Burst rate
Ability to grow with our capability
Ability to get some reasonable shots straight away - easy of use to get a good outcome from auto-settings
Brand strength
Priced accordingly

We initially had our sights on a Nikon D90. It had received very positive reviews (especially, this one on Amazon), and seemed like an ideal start for us.

Petr happened to be in Japan at the time on a business/holiday and so was checking prices there while I was checking them here (and reading copious reviews).

He found a deal on the D90 with a cool-sounding Tamron zoom lens.

It seemed like a good price but there are some mixed reviews on Amazon and I was worried that we wouldn't be able to take it back if we experienced the same problems

http://www.amazon.com/Tamron-18-270mm-3-5-6-3-Aspherical-Nikon/dp/B001DYC0CS

So we committed to a same-brand lens (Nikon with Nikon or Canon with Canon).

We were almost there with our deliberations when Petr found a great deal on the Canon EOS 50D with Canon lens so we were there.

We hooked up in a bar in central Auckland on the evening of Petr's return from Japan. It was kinda like Christmas, unpacking the biggest 'present' I'd received in a while.

We only bought the one lens and so there was little chance of getting a shot in a crowded, dark bar but it was fun to look ...

My first look at/through the Canon EOS 50D

There was a rugby match on the next night on the other side of the bridge (North Harbour v Northland in New Zealand’s NPC competition), so we are ready!

Also, I had managed to get photographer accreditation for the BayPark stadium, the home ground of the Bay Of Plenty team in the same competition. This team, while not favoured before the competition, had won their first 3 matches and so were running hot.

And this was an afternoon game so I was really looking forward to it (and just a little scared at the same time). I was hoping for a positive experience on the evening match before it to gain a bit of much-needed confidence.

I hadn’t convinced myself that the camera was going to do all of the work for me.

I will post some of the results tomorrow