Hi Everyone

As a conference and event photographer in Edinburgh Glasgow and Scotland, I often photograph a number of sports, particularly when I worked with newspapers, covering football, rugby, boxing, hockey, gymnastics and other local sports.  I also photograph football regularly for fun for local clubs.  As an experienced football photographer, I thought I would do a few tips for football photographers in Edinburgh, so here they are:

1. Position is everything in event, corporate and conference photography and this is even more important for the sports photographer in Edinburgh.  For football and this is only if you have the freedom to move, as this is not always the case particularly for big scale professional matches, you should be positioned near the goal where your team are shooting, this depends on who you are covering the game for.  The corner flag is a good position, although some photographers like to get behind the goals where they can photograph from the back with the net and ball in focus.

2. Move your body position, crouch down sometimes to change your angle for a more interesting viewpoint.

3. Shoot about 1/800, - 1/1250, that should be about right for football.  It will need to be much faster for other sports ie motor racing.  If the subject matter is moving towards you, a slower speed should suffice.

4. Whilst you should try and use equipment which has a good rate of frames per second, you should still try and time the shot so you are capturing the most impressive moment.  This often means you click the shutter a fraction of a second earlier to capture the action.

5. You need to capture the ball at all times, unless it is a celebration photo.

 
6. As mentioned above, don’t just shoot the action, capture the crowd, celebrations, anything else happening.  This applies to all conferences and event photography, as it is always important to capture these unexpected moments.

7. Take plenty batteries, you will need them for sports photography.

8. Whilst everyone thinks sports photographers need long lenses, this is not so important for football and a zoom from say 70mm up to 300mm should do.  You may also want to take a shorter lens in case you need to take a portrait image later on.

9. Try and capture the goals if possible.  Also try and get facial expressions and the footballers in the air in mid action, unless you have capture the goal, you should avoid showing the backs of the participants.

10. Lastly enjoy and have a banter with the players and crowd if possible.

Hope all this helps.

Until next time.

Kind Regards

Colin

www.colinwrightphotography.co.uk