Insider view of an 18 day sports assignment.

AceCo55 · Feb 27, 2015

Well I have certainly enjoyed this thread! Very generous of you to share your insight in what must be a busy and tiring schedule for you. I just love the range and diversity of your images - and I am not talking about all the different sports. Rather the story telling of the sport, the action, the emotion, the environment, the details ... simply superb! I am blown away with the high quality images that you keep posting. Inspirational.

imagemaker46 · Feb 27, 2015

This is the snowboard slope style event, I have never shot this before and found it really quite boring for pictures. It was a 30 minute walk up the mountain to the course, a lot faster walking back down. It helped that it was a bright sunny day.

vintagesnaps · Feb 27, 2015

Love the close up of the reflection in the glasses, so cool. Even if this wasn't exactly your favorite event you got some gorgeous photos.

imagemaker46 · Feb 27, 2015

Thanks for all the kind words, I really appreciate them. One of the things I didn't touch on is that with the exception of a few of the sports where I can cover the entire game, most it's more of arriving at the venue, looking for a good spot to shoot from, check the backgrounds and then make sure that the officials aren't going to come along and tell you to move. Some of the sports I'd really like to be able to spend more than 20 or 30 minutes but trying to cover several sports in one day doesn't allow that. What it does do is force you into reading the venue quickly, checking the light and then shooting. It's frustrating that you can come away from a sport knowing that there are better pictures to be made, but have to put that out of mind.

Tomorrow is the last full day of sports, I am hoping to shoot 4 gold medal games.

imagemaker46 · Feb 28, 2015

Judo and Squash.

imagemaker46 · Mar 2, 2015

Well this is it. I shot the last event, gold medal hockey, it is easier to shoot from a high spot, but also the only place that allows coverage on most of the ice. It was a good game, some good pictures. I could post 20 or 30 but have just selected a few.

Thanks to everyone that commented, or just had a look, I hope you were able to take away some ideas and maybe a little inspiration from what I was posting.

Designer · Mar 2, 2015

Expressions on the winning side are perfectly captured!

W.Y.Photo · Mar 3, 2015

These are some really good captures!! I can't wait to see the final edits!!

imagemaker46 · Mar 9, 2015

Here's a quick edit follow up, I've been averaging about 6 hours per day since last Tuesday and have worked my way through six days of images, I expect it will take me another week, and then I start putting the athletes names to the images. Sure is fun.

AceCo55 · Mar 10, 2015

Just wondering if you would be kind enough to share some info.
1) Did you shoot JPEG only / RAW+JPEG / RAW only?
(I can't imagine processing 1000's of RAW photos under changing light conditions)
2) How many photos did you eventually take ... and how many did you keep?. Is that your usual keeper rate? Do you have different levels of keepers?
(eg stellar images / good / keep but borderline)
3) How do you add the metadata / tags ... so that it doesn't become your life 24/7! What method do you use to know the correct name for each player/competitor?

imagemaker46 · Mar 10, 2015

I always shoot jpeg. I didn't do a first count on the images, but was shooting between 750-1200 per day. I do a lot of in camera deleting while shooting and depending on the sport the keeper rate is a lot higher than others. Generally I would say my keeper is around 90%, of that I would say that they are all good usable images, but again depending on the sport, using figure skating, I would say that keeper rate is around 95%, and 80% are solid images. I may keep a few that are border line in the first edit. I run everything through photoshop, and then go through everything again deleting the ones that don't work. Most of these are the borderline that end up getting dumped.

I use photo mechanic and go through and ID each image, when I originally download the raw files, I add the event and the date, I also get a copy of the game roster so I can add the correct names. For the team sports I copy the roster and add it to folder. Names have to be correct. I don't add any other file info to the images. For the athletes that have numbers, it's easy, for the sports where they don't, judo have names on the back, so I shoot the match board and then their back for the name. For Badminton I shoot the match board with the names, and then just shoot, each player is wearing team colours so that's how I ID those. Any I can't ID by name I just ID by the team.

runnah · Mar 10, 2015

Yeah I hate to say it but you missed the mark on the snowboard shots. Next time shoot really close up with a wide or super far back with a 300mm+ . Showing the jump.scenery is way more important than being in tight.

http://payload111.cargocollective.com/1/0/4976/4539732/NikeSnowboarding11_1260.jpg

imagemaker46 · Mar 10, 2015

runnah said:
Yeah I hate to say it but you missed the mark on the snowboard shots. Next time shoot really close up with a wide or super far back with a 300mm+ . Showing the jump.scenery is way more important than being in tight.

http://payload111.cargocollective.com/1/0/4976/4539732/NikeSnowboarding11_1260.jpg

You assume that there was an option as to the backgrounds and shooting locations. There were no mountains as a background, the jumps were right against the tree line, about 10 feet from the edge. What I shot was the cleanest background available. This is why critiquing images is difficult, without knowing the venue or surroundings a critique is pointless. Comparing what I shot to a Nike set up, not the same.

runnah · Mar 10, 2015

imagemaker46 said:
runnah said:

Yeah I hate to say it but you missed the mark on the snowboard shots. Next time shoot really close up with a wide or super far back with a 300mm+ . Showing the jump.scenery is way more important than being in tight.

http://payload111.cargocollective.com/1/0/4976/4539732/NikeSnowboarding11_1260.jpg

Click to expand...

You assume that there was an option as to the backgrounds and shooting locations. There were no mountains as a background, the jumps were right against the tree line, about 10 feet from the edge. What I shot was the cleanest background available. This is why critiquing images is difficult, without knowing the venue or surroundings a critique is pointless. Comparing what I shot to a Nike set up, not the same.

Sorry, I should have assumed you would've done what you could've if the opportunity was there.

imagemaker46 · Mar 10, 2015

No worries, I was expecting more to work with than what was there. The other shooter I was up there with shot the snowboarding in Sochi, he shot it wide from just off one side of the second hill, and came back with a bunch of trees, he was expecting more like Sochi.