Category Archives: Sports Photography

Pleasant Valley vs. Stroudsburg

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Today’s baseball game between PV and Stroudsburg was an exciting, back and forth game that went into extra innings!

Both teams battled back and forth all afternoon putting hits together and advancing base runners to score runs. 2-0, 3-5, 5-5, 7-5, 7-7, back and forth it went. You gotta love a game that features both hitting and scoring. The game went into the eighth inning and was decided by an RBI single in the bottom half of the inning as Stroudsburg pulled out the victory. What a game!

I could also see the light conditions changing as the game progressed. The fall season has days getting shorter and this brings the golden hour into the tail end of these games. As the sun begins to make its way down toward the horizon, the light becomes stunning.

Here are just some of the photos I was able to capture at this exciting game.

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There’s Nothing Quite Like Friday Night Football

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Honesdale Hornets vs. Pleasant Valley Bears. Sounds like a typical Friday night high school football game. But this game was anything but typical!

PV up by 13, then a tie score 20-20 at halftime. Interesting. Hornets up by 3 early in the second half, then up by 10. PV bounces back and goes up by 3. Then Honesdale scores again. Then PV scores again. Final Hornets 37, Bears 40, with the winning touchdown coming with 41 seconds remaining in the game. Wow, what a great game and a great way to spend a Friday night!

Here are some of the photos I captured at tonight’s game. The repeated theme was Rob Getz taking a handoff up the field, twisting and turning, weaving through defenders, and gaining yard and after yard. Getz is elusive to would-be tacklers and knows how to run the ball. He is a special running back to be sure!

Photographing football is great on a number of levels. Being on the sidelines is a special privilege and trying to capture the story of the game with a camera is an honor. Working and talking with fellow photographers is an added bonus. I know I can get better at this and dream of some better equipment in the not-so-distant future, but the thrill I had last night was simply amazing!

Here are six photos from Friday night’s game. You can see the complete gallery here.

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Volleyball

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Yesterday afternoon I photographed a high school volleyball game between Parkland and Nazareth.

Lighting conditions in a gymnasium can be tricky. The color of light can be tough to deal with and oftentimes there is a serious lack of light. The gym for this game wasn’t too bad. The color was pretty much like fluorescent light and it was fairly bright. I did have to crank up the ISO pretty high, but it could have been much worse.

The action in a volleyball game is almost non-stop. It is much faster than baseball, which has more of a stop-and-go rhythm. When it goes, it is fast, but the recovery times are longer. In baseball you must be ready for the play before it happens and this is true for volleyball, too. The problem is the playing field (court) is much smaller so multiple players are often close to one another. This can create cluttered frames, making isolating the subject more difficult. Anticipation and  a little luck can really help!

I photographed the Junior Varsity game first. They played the best out of three games and Parkland won in two straight games.  They did play another exhibition game afterward. Then the Varsity teams played and Parkland won the best of five  in three straight games.

There was plenty of action in all of these games. At first I thought it would be easy to photograph the server in action. I did get some decent photos of the server with the ball in the frame, but it was more difficult than I first thought! Getting the exciting action at the net was even more difficult. Trying to photograph the digs was nearly impossible! At the very least, I have a list of things I desperately want to photograph at the next volleyball game I attend!

Here are a few samples of what I captured yesterday.

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Celebration Photographs

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Photographing a baseball game is one of my most favorite things to do. I enjoy spending time behind the viewfinder during a baseball game and figuring out where the peak action might next take place. The thrill of trying to capture the story as the game unfolds is an exciting challenge to me!

Trying to capture the peak action of the plays on the field is my most favorite subject during a game, but many other little things happen during a game as well. Coaches call time out to talk to a player or visit the mound to talk with the pitcher. Celebrations often occur throughout the game and are sprinkled in with all the exciting action. For example, a player gets safely to second base and claps his hands in enthusiasm or a player high-fives another player after a great inning or game.

Today I am posting four celebration images that serve as good samples of what I am talking about here. They all happened in one game and just serve to show that capturing these little celebrations can really help to tell the full story of the game. This is always my goal: capturing the story of the game as it unfolds to the best of my ability. They say “a picture is worth a thousand words.” If this is true, then I wonder how many words a photo gallery of a baseball game is worth? When a photograph tells a story without having to say a word, then I know I’ve done my job.

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Photo of the Month

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Each month I pick a “Photo of the Month” to display on my all-baseball website: Perfect Game Photos.

The idea is to feature my favorite peak action photograph in a given month. Sometimes this is easy because a cool photograph sticks in my mind. Oftentimes, however, I have a difficult time narrowing down the choices to just one. There can be a lot of good photos taken at one game let alone in one month!

Sports photography is a challenge I enjoy. The object is simple: tell the story of the game and capture peak action. Peak action is defined as the exact moment when a play is being determined. This can be a line drive caught by a diving infielder, a hitter just making contact with the pitch, or a base runner sliding safely into a base, as is the case with this month’s photograph

I am getting better in my sports photography skills and I am becoming more consistent in getting the peak action.

500px

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I heard some photographers talking about and raving over 500px.

This unique website is incredible! Many people post tons of photographs on websites, Flickr, SmugMug, etc. The result is much like the overload we all experience with the internet. Posting so many photos is much better than hiding them away in an old shoebox and it is great for those wanting to have photos of an event or game. The problem is so many photos are posted that we do not see the best of the best. I do this myself. After a baseball or football game, I eagerly post many photographs of that event. I know players like to see themselves in action, so I try to post as many photos as possible attempting to include as many players and as much action as possible. Obviously not all of these photos are top grade. I do try to highlight my favorite shot of the month on my Perfect Game Photos website–posting my favorite photograph of the month.

500px is a website of top quality photographs from all over the world. Check it out at 500px.com You will see incredible photos here and even some that will take your breath away! Photographers post only their best, top quality photos here because the high level of standards with this collection. Forcing oneself to limit posting only the very best photos is a good exercise and helps advance the level of any photographer.

I strongly encourage you to check out this website. 500px is a site to behold! Along the way, check out my photographs. You can let me know what you think of each one by hitting the “Like” or “Dislike” button and/or leaving a comment. You can see my page on 500px here: http://500px.com/bobshankphotography and you can see my portfolio there at this address: http://bobshankphotography.500px.com

Check out 500px.com to see what I am talking about. This is one incredible site!

 

 

 

 

 

Just Updated My Sports Photography Portfolio

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Is your portfolio up to date?

Mine was not. I shoot a lot of different sporting events: baseball, football, golf and even some soccer. I am confident in my ability and the work flow is easy since I use Lightroom. It does take time to sift through anywhere from 600 to over 1,000 photos after  a shoot and I am learning how to be efficient in this process. Lightroom does make it much more manageable!

Each month I post a “Photo of the Month” on my sports photography website: perfectgamephotos.com I typically choose my favorite photo of each month and either tell a short story on how I captured that photo or share a few thoughts pertaining to what is in the photograph. I was blessed to be a student at Temple University in the communications. We had to take the obligatory basic photography class and my life was never the same! My final project for the class was to shadow a newspaper photographer in my hometown for a day, culminating in the shooting of a high school baseball game. I could see that my final grade was definitely assisted by the photographs I was able to capture at that game for this final assignment. To this day, I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of photographing a sporting event. I believe as each game is played it tells a unique story. My job as a photographer is to tell this story with the photographs I capture with my camera. What is the plot of this particular game? What is the turning point or climax of this game? How are the players reacting? Photographs still tell these stories better than hundred of words!

Even with all the modern tools of digital photography and Lighroom, I am not good at keeping my portfolio up to date. So last night I decided it was time to update my sports photography portfolio. Motivation for this came to me because I want to use the updated portfolio as a reference point for a hopeful upcoming assignment. It was definitely time to gather my best work and put them on display. The portfolio will hopefully display my photographic skills, ability, and experience in sports photography.

One dilemma I confronted was just how I wanted to display my portfolio. Lightroom allows easy output to web galleries, but I wanted the photos to appear in a large format without having to click on a thumbnail. I also wasn’t pleased with the slow screen rate with some flash plug-ins. So I decided to create CSS HTML code to present my portfolio photos all in a row. I figured this display would be easy to navigate and get my photographs more easily in front of the eyes who wanted to see my best work.

A quick search on the internet helped me put wings to my dream. I found some CSS code that looked like it might work and with a few editorial alterations I knew I was in business. The power of the internet continues to amaze me! I spent most of the night last night tweaking the layout to display my portfolio after going through and assembling my sports portfolio. I still am not completely happy with the result due to the slow screen rate as photos are first loaded but it will work at least for now. How do you prefer to display your portfolio? What works best for you?

I will admit to the difficulty I encountered in narrowing down my number of photographs. There were some I was personally attached to for some reason, but I eventually realized some of these did not fit the high standards to be included in the portfolio. This editorial challenge forced me to critique each photograph in painstaking detail. It was a good exercise and I believe it will even help me on my upcoming photo shoots. We can learn a lot by going back over past work!

My updated sports photography portfolio can be viewed here.

And here are a few of the photos that made the cut.

 

 

The Moment

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Today I had the privilege of shooting a baseball game at East Stroudsburg University. It was not a college game but a baseball camp game run by the Warrior’s head baseball coach — Coach Kochmansky. Coach K runs excellent baseball camps to teach young boys the fundamentals of baseball. He teaches the proper swing, how to field a baseball, and all the basic ingredients that helps develop a boy into a solid baseball player. I know this firsthand, because our son, James, attended quite a few of Coach K’s baseball camps and learned a whole lot and developed into a solid hitter and fielder.

These photographs today focus on “The Moment.” The rest of the photographs can be seen on my website.

Most of them focus on the moment of a swing at the plate. It is that precious moment when a batter decides to swing at the pitch or not. He can see the ball and believes he can make solid contact and drive the baseball. A hitter only has a fraction of a second to make this decision and begin his swing. Capturing “The Moment” with my camera is one of the greatest and most rewarding challenges for a sports photographer. Everything has to be just right–proper focus, right composition, correct depth of field, etc.

Do you think I caught “The Moment” in these photos?

Lightroom Photo Collages

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Adobe Lightroom is my most favorite photo-editing software. I can quickly go through an entire photo shoot, pick the keepers, do some quick touch-up edits of some photos, and post them as a gallery on my website. It is awesome!

I still do use Photoshop for some more advanced editing and creating some collages, like the ones I do for the high school baseball seniors. Photoshop certainly has its place and I do keep it within arm’s length, but more and more I find additional features in Lightroom. A recent example is creating collages right in Lightroom.

A photo collage is a great way to share the highlights of a vacation, a baseball game, a musical, or any other subject captured with your camera. Here are five samples that I was playing with the other night. (You can click on each image to see a larger photo of the collage.) I think they make great photo keepsakes. What do you think? Which one do you like best?

Action at the Plate

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Baseball is a game with a lot of what I call stop-n-go action. You can watch a game for a long time and nothing much seems to happen. But close your eyes or blink just at the wrong time and you can miss very exciting action!

There is nothing more exciting than a play at the plate. For non-baseball fans, this simply means a play at home plate when the catcher is trying to tag out a base runner. I suppose it doesn’t hurt that in our family our son, James, is a catcher. I know I’m just as proud as any other father, but James is a great catcher. He receives and blocks well, has a good arm to second base, is throwing out more and more base-stealers, and is not afraid to put his nose into the middle of a play at home plate with a sliding base runner crashing toward him.

Here is one photo I took of him last week. As you can see, the play is at the plate and he is attempting to tag the runner out. This is the action I mean when I say there is nothing more exciting in baseball than a play at the plate. Does this photograph exude action and excitement to you? Will the base runner be safe or will he be out? Will the tag be put on in time or with the player sliding into the plate avoid the tag? In the end, this play resulted in the umpire calling the runner out! James then tossed the ball to the pitcher’s mound and turned to go into his dugout to get ready to hit.

You gotta love the action at the plate! Don’t you think? (Click on the photo to see a larger sized image with more detail)