I always tell student photographers to make sure their portfolio is diverse in content. That means don’t have all your portraits be of the same person or don’t have all travel photos from when you did a semester abroad. So many students get stuck on the sports photos. They complain that they can’t get into the university or pro events. Honestly, those can be the worst sports to shoot because the pros don’t make too many mistakes and the passion isn’t there like you find in high school sports. Photographers don’t even need to cover the bigger schools or rival matches to find the passion.
Sunday I shot lacrosse at my son’s high school. I went early to get part of the JV game because those kids play their hearts out trying to prove that they are worthy of varsity. This match was more of an exhibition match because the schools were in different divisions. The visiting team had a tough game the day before and many of their players were injured so kids had to fill in roles they didn’t normally play. These kids had passion for the game and it shows in the photos. That is what photographers want, passion, emotion and action.
The fun thing about this game was that there were other photographers there. They weren’t pros but they were dedicated enough to get out and make pictures. One photographer knows the sport like I do and coaches little ones to grow the sport. He got some nice shots and had a vision for what he wanted to capture. I might try some of his angles next home game. My son’s dad is also a photographer. Not knowing the sport but being a creative sports photographer, he worked from positions that I had not shot from before. I learned from him too, trying a higher angle to clean up the background. It looks good but you can miss faces. I think it is important to learn from each other to improve our craft.
Nell Carroll Photography 