As technology continued to improve in photography, more and more photographers took to the streets and away from their studios and into the reality of the world. They needed to be where the action was. One of these venues was in the great wide world of sports.
The photographers in ancient history didn’t use a camera; they created sculptures. There has always been some form of capturing the action of competitive sports, whether it’s been with sculptures or pencil sketching or even the modern day digital camera.
In the past, sports photography wasnt possible since technology hadn’t evolved to the point where capturing sports action was possible. Only the people who were present at the event could speak about the game’s action, and they did so from memory only. But with today’s technology, even the absolute novice photographer can take a decent action shot.
The collodion process was an early process for taking photographic images. It was eventually replaced near the end of the 19th century with the use of dry plates – the plates allowed for much shorter exposure times. Despite their advanced development process for the time, neither of those methods were fast enough for sports photography.
In the 1930s, photography continued to improve, enabling photographers to capture the images of people in a much quicker fashion. Portrait photography boomed. The time-camera systems available at that time were faster and were the earliest types of photography that were able to capture images in action.
American baseball was one of the first sports to be popularized by still photography. It was during this period that people needed a form of distraction due to the ongoing war. Sports helped relieve them from sadness and worry. During this time came the invention of the pixel – a new way of printing. This improved the way sports photography was photographed and printed, allowing for the widespread exposure for both the games and the athletes.
As the world continued to evolve during its steady progress into the future, so did the tool used by photographers. Today’s modern day cameras can capture even the fastest actions performed by a human or animal, allowing professional and amateur photographers alike to enjoy the challenging world of sports photography.
At present, if you are interested in developing a career in sports photography, youll probably get your start working for a local newspaper. You can photograph local high school and college sports, and then forward the images to any of the local newspapers that might like to cover the story. It is truly an exciting experience to capture sports moments, particularly if you see your work in printed format after the fact (such as a local newspaper).
For sports photography, you need a camera that can capture images using extremely fast shutter speeds. This depends mostly on the type of lens you use. You will need a variety of lenses so you can adapt to the rapid pace of whichever sport you’re photographing. Youll need a camera that has a quick auto focus feature included. Or, you’ll have to get creative at manually focusing your camera at a certain location on the field, and then capturing athletes as they pass through that plane.
The more money you spend on your equipment (particularly your lenses) the higher quality images you will be able to capture. Of course, knowing where to position your camera helps considerably. You’ll need to have thorough knowledge of the sport you’re photographing if you wish to capture the best action shots.