Sports photography -- baseball

[JenC]

I am wondering if anybody out there shoots a lot of sports and uses PE to do any editing. I am attemping to become the "team photographer" for my son's baseball team and would really like to make some really impressive shots to produce at the end of the year.

Anybody have any suggestions on how to "tweak" a sports photo to make it look stunning. I have a DVD about taking sports photos (can't remember the name right off the bat) that was a HUGE help. Just wanted people's thoughts on some tricks they might have picked up. I saw a really neato link last night about how to make baseball cards, which I will do for each of the boys for the end of the year.

I'm on Elements 6 and a beginner.

Thanks,
Jenny

[jdaa]

I'm also interested in your question. I do all kinds of sports photography but I'm the main photographer for my daughter's summer swim team. I've done it for the past 3 years. I would like to learn some new techniques.

Also, could you tell me the name of the DVD and the link for the baseball cards?

[photoshopsusieq]

I've been known to hang out out the fields to take a few pictures. I'd be interested in knowing the name of the DVD too ;) Thanks!

[JenC]

The very wonderful DVD that I have is called "Digital Sports Photography Made Simple. How to Take Great Action Photos." It's a great DVD. It's made by Vortex Media. If you are shooting amateur kid sports, this is a great asset.

The link for the baseball cards is: http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1166.html
It's from 2005 but it looks really neat.

Good luck.

Jenny

[kImages]

Hi Jen. If you are looking to do collages etc for individual players check out a thread called Football Pics in Gallery (http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13490&highlight=football) That thread really should be a separate sub forum as it covers all kinds of things about sports shooting, working with Elements, making collages etc. It's a humongous thread with some 1800+ replies and 60,000 views. But some great info from some talented people.

I shoot officially for a soccer club and offer both game pictures and team/individual posed shots.

For game pictures - shoot, shoot, shoot. Set your DSLR on continous, follow the ball, use a monopod. Make sure for baseball that there is a fence between you and the ball. Those balls move really fast; I like to shoot from just inside the dugout - get the coach's permission. For football be careful if you are right on the sideline - you can easily become part of the game and get taken out with a sideline tackle.

For formal shots - try to avoid mid-day sun. Make sure the kid is not facing the sun. Let the kids try out their own poses. Pay attentions to fly away hair, cross shadows on the faces, deep shadows under eyes. Much cleaner, faster workflow when you correct that stuff before post processing.

For printing try out MPIX.com for the cool bag tags, pins etc. They also offer the templates for sports cards, magazine covers and calendars.

Good luck.

[skarke]

Of course, a really fast lens helps a lot. Sigma and Tamron has, or is launching, a 70-200 f2.8 that make for awesome sports shots. They're a little pricey, but nothing like the brand products at 3x as much. The Tamron/Sigma products are fine for all but the most needy photographers. Plus, there are reasonably priced multipliers (1.4) that will really help those lenses reach out and touch the athletes.

[emkayess65]

Hi, there is a tutorial on making baseball cards in the subsciber area at PET

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1M1ORBOxhRUyh72YSPjAvvL2OZ5oO0_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1M1ORBOxhRUyh72YSPjAvvL2OZ5oO0)

mks

[JenC]

Thank you for the very useful advice. However, what I am more interested in is the editing done to the photos afterwards -- Like making the sky bluer, the grass greener, bluring the background, getting rid of "junk" in the background, that kind of stuff. Does anybody do that to make the image ... just ... a ... little ... bit ... better? And I'm asking specifically about sports because that's what I'm doing and I'm not creative enough to apply other theories to what I am working on. So I was wanting to see some before and afters of baseball pics.

Anybody got any???

Jen

[cats4jan]

Jen - do take heed of the advice of things to note WHILE taking photographs. So many of the problems are pretty hard for a beginner to fix. And many of the things are not even possible to fix.

Since paying attention to the surroundings while taking photos, I no longer have to remove twigs sprouting out of people's heads and trash cans in the background. Makes post production a whole lot easier.

[jjvera00]

... what I am more interested in is the editing done to the photos afterwards -- Like making the sky bluer, the grass greener, bluring the background, getting rid of "junk" in the background, that kind of stuff. Does anybody do that to make the image ... just ... a ... little ... bit ... better?

Jen doing the above is not "just for sport pics." Just do searches here for making skies bluer, the grass greener, etc.

For a bluer sky, you may want to do an Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer to adjust for the color of the sky, same thing to make the grass greener.

For Blurring, just select what you want to blur, duplicate the selection to its own layer, then add a Gaussian Blur to it.

To get rid of junk use the clone tool to remove that trash can you want gone.

But take Janice's advice, look at everyhting in the view finder, not just what you are taking a picture of.

[AKSharla]

Jen, there are very useful tutorials that PE has availible under tips and tricks. When you are in the organizer...you might already know this, but just in case..hit help on your tool bar..on the drop down menu click on Photoshop Elements Online...Scroll Down to tips,tricks and training and click on it. This takes you to so many possible training, free and modestly priced for what you get! Just remember your imagination is the limit on what you can do. But here are some old pics that I have done when I was first starting. I favor the subject in color and all else in Black and White. You do have the imagination or you wouldn't have been asked to shoot for the team!

Your lenses and camera's are important, but it is your eye and your imagination that will get you where you belong!!!! Don't sell yourself short. I hope that these will give you some ideas...Keep Shooting!!!!!

http://a949.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/107/m_d1ec3643f8e4261fb461a0bef16e0304.jpg http://a48.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/107/m_f1dc4157102b5827763e487548fff0c7.jpg http://a595.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/68/m_45bf6e5d5549dfb138c86fb1b7d7fd4a.jpg http://a157.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/117/m_85ae431d589a6c73c01fb647f086285c.jpg

[JenC]

Thank you for all the great input. This is exactly what I needed. And I love those photos that you did. Those were really spectacular.

Jenny

[Timtypes]

Jen,

A couple of things -- Photo Tips -- Shoot with lens wide open and a fast shutter. Keep the sun out of your face. Predict the play, forget the batter when you have a player on first or third. Get ready for the slide into home or second base. If you are really good (lucky) the runner will turn and face you when he slides. If you ever shoot indoors with low light, switch to manual settings and shoot wide open with shutter speed as needed. You can underexpose and correct in PSE. My editor always told me when you get the ball, the action, and the faces, you've got the shot!

PSE Tips -- crop very tight, elliminate everything but the action, I use the stroke selection method to put a border around the image for making baseball cards. I stroke the image more than once using the colors of the uniforms. Add canvas to bottom for the players name before using the stroke method. I've also put an image of the American flag behind the image, looks like an all-star!

Tim

[photoshopsusieq]

I totally agree with Tim. Anticipating the action puts you a step ahead in getting "THE SHOT". You might want to pan the subject while you take the shot. With some practice you can get some interesting shots.

Don't forget to take some non-action photos.

Here are some before and after examples of sports photo creations from my gallery. I look forward to seeing some of yours soon!

http://www.elementsvillage.com/gallery/files/9/7/3/0/ss7_MGCVR_baseball_thumb.jpg (http://www.elementsvillage.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=73&c=member&imageuser=9730)http://www.elementsvillage.com/gallery/files/9/7/3/0/ss8_CP_baseball_thumb.jpg (http://www.elementsvillage.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=74&c=member&imageuser=9730)http://www.elementsvillage.com/gallery/files/9/7/3/0/ss9_sepia_grng_baseball_thumb.jpg (http://www.elementsvillage.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=79&c=member&imageuser=9730)http://www.elementsvillage.com/gallery/files/9/7/3/0/ss10_grng_baseball_thumb.jpg (http://www.elementsvillage.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=80&c=member&imageuser=9730)

[jenclark]

Hi Jen,

I'm doing the same thing with taking my son's baseball shots and making creative layouts. I am not on my main computer but will return with links to some great sites that have helped me with sports photography. You can ask all kinds of questions and there are photos galore to see how things are done. Many even include the settings used and explainations. It's a good reference for me.

Here is my gallery if you want to see some baseball layouts that I have done recently. I'm working on more.
http://www.viovio.com/photos/gallery/19889

I will try to remember the link and if for some reason you don't hear from me or see the link, send me a pm.

Hope this helps. Oh and like the user name you have....but for some reason I can't figure out why??? LOL

[jdaa]

Susan, I absolutely love your work. I would love to know how you did the sepia photos with the baseballs around it. If I don't use all the effects and options regularly I forget them....sign of old age I'm afraid. I would love to know the steps you took to get this effect. I'm assuming the baseballs are a brush. Where/How did you do it? If I could reproduce this for my daughter's softball pics I would be jumpin up and down. If you could give me the steps I would greatly appreciate it.

Now I'm off to see Jen's photos. I do regular scrapbooking and would like to start learning a few things about digital scrapbooking. Do you have any suggestions for starting? I have an Epson 1270 printer but have never been able to get it to print 12X12 even though it's supposed to. What paper do you use?

Thanks everyone so much for all the help with sports photography and the finished products. This is exciting.

[jdaa]

Great layouts....really really great. I am such a beginner. I assume you use PSE. Where do you buy/get you effects? I've never done/used an overlay. Could you tell me some more about it? Where do you get the templates that you talk about?

I would love the website of where you said you learned a lot.

Thanks so much for sharing.

[jenclark]

Here is the forum for the photography where I have learned a great deal.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/

There is a link for sports...and anything you want is there for every sport. Plus all the other categories.

As for overlay, I have just used papers that I bought and set them to overlay. Some of the great sites I have bought baseball scrap files are

Here are some sports templates (Gootapixel)
http://www.gottapixel.net/store/search.php?mode=search&page=1
More Great baseball files (Scrapbook-bytes)
http://scrapbookbytes.com/store/search.php?mode=search&page=1
Many things here (Designerdigitals)
http://www.designerdigitals.com/ecom/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=sports&osCsid=7224e0b7f677d4fbe82d4db69adefb8a

Hope this helps.

[n-d40]

jenc
shutter lag can be minimized by pushing the shutter button half way so the camera can focus.
I picked this tip up at you tube under photo hints.
the momphotographer has a few short vidoes I found helpful

razz

[JenC]

Thanks for all the great advice. I think I'm getting the hang of it. Maybe I'll post some pics once I practice a little more. The beginning is always the most awkard... :eek:

I have found that YouTube has some great tutorials and browse there frequently. You can find anything on YouTube. Between YouTube and eBay, I don't know how anybody has ever been able to sustain life -- and I'm old enough to remember not having a microwave and a VHS VCR.

And Susie, how did you do the baseball picture if the boy with his back to you, looking out onto the field? I think it might be a water color effect? Was that really involved to do? I'd love some instruction on that. I think it's a beautiful picture. You did a great job on that.

I also love the idea of having an American flag as a background. I am going to do some more guessing on how to accomplish that effect, so please jump in if I'm off. But would you do it as blend? Have the flag in the background and then decrease the opacity? I think that would be a great finished photo effect.

Thank you to everybody for all this wonderful advice. I'm glad I got this thread started. There are some very creative people out there!! :)

Jen

[photoshopsusieq]

And Susie, how did you do the baseball picture if the boy with his back to you, looking out onto the field? I think it might be a water color effect? Was that really involved to do? I'd love some instruction on that. I think it's a beautiful picture. You did a great job on that.

Jen

Thanks for asking about that photo creation Jen. I'm particularly proud of that one :)

I used this Watercolour Tutorial (http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30707) as a start and then I just kept playing with it. I have to confess that this photo worked exceedingly well with the technique. His mom said it looked like "a Hallmark card".

I encourage you to have fun and do lots of experimenting. (Make sure you're working on a duplicate copy of your photo. The whole photo not just a duplicate layer!) Don't be afraid to use lots of layers... lots of filters... lots of blend modes.... don't forget to experiment with the opacity levels. Have fun and be sure to post some of your final Photo Creations in your gallery for us to see!