A wide-angle lens is the popular choice for skateboard photography. Shooting from a low angle is also a good technique. These unusual views probably help mirror the counter-culture feel of the sport. Personally, I like the change of pace the sport provides to more typical sports photography. Because skateboarding is all about spectacular jumps and tricks, it’s a sport that photographs well. Whether you’re shooting in a park or street setting, or photographing vert (vertical) ramp action, the opportunity is there to create some fun images. Don’t forget to look for graphic compositions of boarders against a clear sky. Here you can separate the athlete from his surroundings and focus in on the unusual moves he makes.

Both downhill and cross-country skiing require you to consider the effect of all that bright white snow on your light meter. Set your exposure compensation for as much as two extra f-stops compensation to make sure the skiers are properly exposed; otherwise, the camera will show gray snow and dark skiers. Photograph cross-country skiers head on with a telephoto lens. Make close-ups of the colorful clothing the athletes wear and of the colorful waxes they use. Include shots of them working on their skis if possible. Isolate the loneliness of the sport by showing one skier against a large barren backdrop. Because downhill skiers move much faster than their cross-country brethren, it can be a real challenge to photograph them well. Be prepared to react quickly and plan on prefocusing on a specific part of the course or trail instead of hoping your auto focus is fast enough to catch them. If you have a super telephoto (500mm or greater), shoot from the area behind the goal so you can get players from all over the field coming straight toward you. Have a second camera with a modest zoom for when players get too close for the super telephoto. If you’re a parent or friend with more modest equipment, walk the sidelines concentrating on your specific player. Most players have a certain area and side of the field they cover, so put yourself as close to this action area as possible. Shoot vertically. If your player consistently comes close to the sidelines, try zone focusing (pre-focus on a point where you think the player will be, set your aperture to about f8, and turn off your autofocus if you can). Take the shot when the player comes close, and you should have enough depth of field to get a sharp image. Just make sure you’r shutter speed is set to at least 1/250th of a second.

The techniques are the same for these two sports. Flash isn’t allowed during a dive competition, but it is usually allowed during practice. Flash is almost always allowed during the swimming portion of the meet. Arrive early (at least a half an hour) to give your equipment a chance to get used to the humidity. If you show up at a big indoor swimming pool and just snatch your gear out of your camera bag, your lenses and viewfinder are going to fog over and you’ll not be happy. No amount of wiping will solve this problem. (Some pros carry small travel hair dryers with them for just such an emergency.) The easiest solution is to get there early and leave your gear inside the camera bag until it’s had a chance to acclimatize. (It takes about a half an hour.) To photograph swimmers, shoot from the end of each lane for strokes where the swimmer’s head comes out of the water centered and looking toward the lane end (butterfly and breast stroke). Shoot from the side of the pool for strokes where the swimmer isn’t looking ahead (backstroke and crawl). Shoot diving in profile and also head on with a long lens. Another exciting moment is at the start of the race when swimmers dive into the pool. You can shoot this from the side and use flash for good results. Tennis When photographing tennis, shoot through the fence with a long telephoto or get up at the net with a medium zoom. Time your shot for the moment before the racket hits the ball, and don’t be afraid to compose tightly. Look for moments of peak excitement, such as when the server tosses the ball up in the air and freezes just a moment. This sport usually calls for a telephoto in the 300mm to 400mm range if you’re shooting from behind the fence. The narrow angle of view makes shooting through chain link easy. Use an 80–200 zoom if you’re sitting up at the net following players at the baseline. Use a shorter zoom if you’re covering a serve and volleyer (alas, a dying breed) from the net. Most tennis action is covered horizontally, making it a problem to find strong vertical compositions. Look for verticals when the player serves and makes overhead slams. Timing calls for you to trip the shutter shortly after the player begins her back swing. Be prepared for very fast action when the player is at the net. Frame the shot loosely because you can’t tell which way the players will move until the last instant. Many indoor courts and even some outdoor venues offer elevated viewpoints of the courts. Although this is not the best choice for your main coverage, these spots can give you an alternative viewpoint. If it’s possible to shoot almost straight down on the player while she is serving, you can create an unusual shot looking down into her eyes. More often than not, you need to set up this photo during practice by standing on a ladder and staging the action.

A track and field meet offers a smorgasbord of sports for you to follow. And, just to make things a little more challenging, multiple events are going on at the same time. The good news is that track and field can be covered quite well with just an 80–200 lens, although longer focal lengths can come in handy. The hard part is picking and choosing your spots so you can make images at as many different events as you need to. A track and field meet typically includes various running events, hurdles, high jump, long jump, javelin toss, discus throw, shot put, pole vault, and occasionally events such as the triple jump and steeplechase. It’s not unusual, though, for a smaller meet to run less than a full slate of events. Hardest to cover are the short relays because you can’t be at every relay point. If you position yourself near the exchange point for the first exchange, you can photograph the first runner coming around the curve towards you and then shoot the exchange. If you’re really quick, you may be able to sprint across the field and catch the fourth runner coming down the homestretch. When you get to the longer races, your opportunities to photograph every runner increase, although sometimes two runners are in such close proximity that the front runner screens the rear one the entire time they’re in range of your camera. I usually try to be near the exchange point. That way, I can photograph one runner coming toward my position, document the exchange (which is one of the more interesting shots in running), and rack out my zoom to get the next runner. I usually do this with a 28–70 zoom, but this is one time where something like a 35–105 or some similar zoom is really nice. If you’re shooting with a point-and-shoot whose zoom is too slow to recompose for each of the preceding suggestions, concentrate on the exchange. It’s a much more exciting shot than one of the runner just running. Hurdles photograph well, but this event can be difficult if you’re trying to photograph each participant. The “money” shot in this sport is the athlete flying over the hurdle, shot from straight on. I have a 170–500 zoom and like to use it for this event because it lets me cover three hurdles worth of action.

The long jump is my favorite event and probably the easiest to photograph well. You know where the athlete is starting from and where she’s going. And because she’s moving in a straight line, she’s easy for your auto focus to track. You can even prefocus on the expected landing point if you have to. To make things even better, you can photograph the jumper while in mid-air for a very dramatic image. Shoot this one from straight on while kneeling if possible. Pole vault offers at least two interesting shots. The first is to photograph the athlete head-on as he races down the approach, shooting straight down the pole into the vaulter’s face. Compose this shot fairly tightly; you don’t need to show the entire pole or the athlete’s legs. The second shot is the athlete going over the bar. You can get this from behind the pit, but look for nearby stands that will enable you to get level with the bar. This vantage point will give you the best opportunities. Shot put, discus, and javelin all photograph similarly. Because of safety concerns, you can’t photograph the athlete’s head on unless you’re using a very long lens. Usually, you can position yourself down one of the diagonal lines leading away from them. This means you’ll only be able to get the participants who are throwing from the opposite hand of the side you’re on. Because each athlete throws at least three times, you have the opportunity to get a shot of everyone if you want. An alternative view for the shot put is behind the pit. Here, you can compose a photo of the athlete with the shot pressed against his cheek the moment before he begins the throw. Use a long lens to compress the image and also to put some space between you and the athlete. (It’s important to remember that you don’t want to interfere with the throw.)

Steeplechase is an unusual event that features a number of jumps over what I can only describe as odd barriers. This event isn’t held all that often at the high school level. I generally like to station myself near the water jump because it’s the most dramatic location on the track. An 80-200 zoom works just fine and gives you some play for different compositions. I’ve only seen this event held once at a girl’s high school track meet, but it was pretty fun. Because this isn’t a regular event for them, a lot of the athletes want to enter just for the novelty. Very few could clear the water jump so there was lots of splashing (which photographs well). It even reached a point on the last lap where one coached yelled to his runner to do a cannonball into the deep end of the hazard. Outdoors, this is a relatively manageable sport to photograph, and you can make good pictures from behind with a very long lens or from the sides and up in the stands with an 80-200 zoom. As the level of play improves, you can more reliably predict who will be the second and third players to touch the ball and be ready to photograph them. Indoor volleyball is more challenging because of mediocre light and a ban on using flash, because it distracts the players. This means that even with high ISO settings (800 ISO, maybe even 1000 ISO), you’re shooting at barely adequate shutter speeds to stop action. Your best bet is to see if you can use flash during warm-ups or practice and then do the best you can during the match. This is another sport where you should plan for large numbers of wasted exposures and have plenty of memory on hand.

The ideal position is to be on the boat towing the wakeboarder or on a pier jutting into the water so you can photograph the wake boarder straight on. If you can’t be in this position, find a spot on shore near, but slightly beyond, one of the jumps. Use a long lens (300mm or greater) and keep a slightly loose composition. This is another sport with lots of wasted pictures. Running short of memory shouldn’t be a problem though. Odds are you’ll only have a chance to fire off a few shots for each run. Light is a problem, and the odds of your being able to use flash are pretty small. If you were lifting a few hundred pounds over your head would you want a bunch of flashes firing into your eyes? The good news is that the athletes don’t move that quickly and you know where they’re going to be and how they’re going to be moving. Plan a tight composition from just above the extended weights to down to slightly below the athlete’s chin. An even more dramatic image is to make a shot when the bar is resting on the athlete’s chest and he’s concentrating on his next move. Make this a very tight composition of just his face and the bar and wait for the moment he starts to push the bar up. Close-ups of chalk covered hands and stacks of weights make good secondary shots. If you can get directly above and shoot straight down, this makes for a good view, but the opportunities for this kind of shot are rare.

This is another sport that’s played in poorly lit gyms. The good news is that you’re almost always allowed to use flash. This makes wrestling fairly easy to photograph well. Get low for this sport. Sit on the floor and be ready to lie flat when the wrestlers are doing the same. Look for a photo of one wrestler staring at his opponent arms out ready to attack. Also look for shots of the two athletes down on the mat. Compose photos tightly and remember what’s important: the faces and particularly the eyes of the participants. Sports photography is one of the most exciting and fun types of photography I know. Not only is it challenging, it’s also a terrific feeling to know that in the midst of all the action, you’ve made a great photo. There’s an added bonus, too. As someone who shoots lots of high school sporting events, I get to meet and interact with the current generation of young people. There are a lot of nice kids out there, and you’ll find plenty of them at your local athletic field. Try to learn the basics of the sport before you go on the shoot. If you know how a game or event will unfold, it’s much easier to be prepared to snap a great shot of the action. The best advice I can offer to anyone who wants to shoot a sporting event is to shoot a lot and shoot often. The more time you spend photographing a sport, the better you can learn to anticipate action and the better your timing will become.