In this blog I am going to be more lecturer as seen as I have a teaching qualification it makes sense to put it to some use and share some of my own experience as a photographer. Today i am going to ramble about the importance of keeping brushed up and expanding on your photographic skill set and type of subjects for your portfolio especially when starting out.
Usually, the image i accompany a post with are, beautiful landscapes at sunset, or a cascading waterfall but this time is a bit different.
This time I have been dabbling in a touch of sports photography. More specifically Football photography. Now i am a big football fan so combining the too was rather fun. And Challenging in a good way.
If you look back through my Landscapes Gallery you will see I often use longer shutter speeds for my images. And while this is a stylistic choice I do often worry I will then struggle to freeze action with a faster shutter when required. So given this shooting a fast paced game of association football is the perfect skills tester and refresher.
So how does someone who spends most of there time either in the middle of a moorland, Photographing a old mill wall with a Waterfall falling through an archway, or playing console games until an ungodly hour...like midnight, end up shooting a F.A football match?
an lad who I went to college around the same time with maybe a year or 2 between us, Sent me a message asking if i would mind doing a shoot for him while he was at his football training, to which I obliged. one thing lead to another and next thing I know it's Saturday afternoon and I am in a van on my way to Darwen near Blackburn for the first teams match against the Darwen reserves with my Photography bag at my feet.
First thing to do was a Team Photo (Don't worry it's not the one above with the dude flat out)
It's this one which takes the more tried and tested formula, followed by some individual player shots then I started to shoot the wrapping up of the pre-match warm up before I found my shooting location for the game.
The first half seemed to fly by and I had taken just under 1,000 shots with my fast shutter speed and the camera set on continuous to make sure I wouldn't miss any of the action. I also set my ISO to Auto. This seemed wise as I didn't want to be constantly changing it while goals were flying it or the winger did a photogenic piece of skill....or in Rochdale St.Clements case the Wing Back came marauding up the right flank to whip a cross in.
Despite St.Clements out playing Darwen Reserves for much of the game they had to settle for a 2-2 draw but while the final whistle was the end of the day for the players and management for me it was only half time. I had just under 2000 images to work through and sort.
I was quietly confident i had some good shots among the 2000. And was pleasantly reassured of this confidence once I uploaded my images into my editing software on my laptop. I soon found and editing formula which i felt complimented the images well and i felt where pleasing. at the time of writing I have found 21 of my images are perfectly adequate for my needs and perfect to add to my portfolio as a break from long exposures of waterfalls and product photography. I believe it's always good to have a array of different types and genres of photography in your portfolio. While I understand the idea of specialising in a certain branch of the art as you could easily argue my portfolio shows of myself and landscape photography I want to show I am also believe a photographer should be able to use the camera to shoot all kinds of photography and be able to show this in their portfolio even if it's not necessarily their field. to quote the bear grills meme 'Improvise, Adapt, Overcome'
P.S I have since decided this guy is actually Superman pretending to be a normal dude but just forgot normal people don't fly even after scoring a worldie.
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