IMAGE MAKER

Soccer shotsWhen it rains at a soccer game, I leavemy camera at home. The day is often verydark and your ISO needs to be bumped upfor a faster shutter speed. So, you get noiseof course. I’ve discovered that it is simplynot worth taking the camera to a game on arainy day. I rather have my hands free tokeep my umbrella over me.The designated parent seating area cansometimes be on the same side as the gameslinesmen. If you happen to be sitting on thesame side of the linesman, then you mostoften have the linesman in your photos.He or she runs up and down thesidelines as the game moves up and downthe field. Linesmen popping up in yourphotos can be frustrating. So I tend toenjoy those games with the camera in mylap.I’ve discovered that taking photos of thegoalie can be very challenging. While takinggoalie “action” shots, there are too manyplayers in front of the goalie. My best goaliepictures have been taken during the warmup time. Not many players move in front ofthe goalie during the warm ups. That when Igot my best photos of the goalie.Siting my chair with my telephoto lensgave me the perspective I was looking for.Being up in staged bleachers did not give mewhat I felt to be a good perspective. I wasup too high to get the facial expressions Iwas looking for. I tried going behind thegoalie net. The netting was too difficult toget focussing right all the time. Standing afew meters to the side of the nets ended upbeing a good place to take photos. But, thenI was only taking pictures of the forwardplayers and not the defence players.Once the parents started noticing thatmy camera was always with me at games,more of them started asking for photos. Iended up starting a website. That becamevery time consuming but a lot of fun aswell. I was getting nice comments fromparents, team members and coaches.I actually ended up putting together atwo hour DVD that included 300 picturesof soccer moments. The parents and playerswere thrilled to buy the DVD.Here are some of my photos of mydaughter playing soccer last summer.Enjoy!Sackville Photography Club 23