Digital Photography Tricks - Score With Great Shots At A Football Match!

If you love football, like myself, there are more opportunities than ever to watch the action on television. But, despite all the camera angles, replays, and High Definition coverage available, I find that a perfectly shot photograph actually taken at a game can speak volumes - capturing every ounce of sweat and toil the player is spilling, and freezing that moment forever. If you would like to attempt this challenging, but rewarding genre, here are a few digital photography tricks to help you on your way. A game over your local park is a great place to try this out for the first time.

Consider your position. Where you set up will have a massive impact on your final shots. Get on the side and close to one end if you want to take good shots of players running past and also a wide view of the goalmouth for any action here, or shots on target. For thrilling shots of players coming straight towards you, put yourself behind the touchline, at either side of the net. Watch out for that striker who's off target, though!

Put on your neutral head. If you support one of the teams, or have family playing, try to forget this and ensure you capture shots of both teams. Watch the game purely as a photographer, this will ensure you don't miss opportunities that may pass you by if you concentrate on only one team or player.

Obviously, the real digital photography tricks come into play when controlling the camera's settings. Try shooting in Aperture Priority (Av) mode, setting the aperture as wide as possible. Depending on the lens, settings of around f/4 or f/6 should provide enough depth of field to successfully blur distracting backgrounds. In Av mode, shutter settings will adjust automatically, influenced by the lighting conditions, in order to maintain correct exposure.

In many situations RAW images are preferred to JPEGs, mainly because of the level of enhancement you can make later in Photoshop, or equivalent. However, in this case, continuous shooting mode should be used as you will want to take multiple shots of the action. Therefore, consider shooting in JPEG for this assignment, which will allow for an increased amount of shots to be captured without the need to change the memory card.

Finally, to help control the camera, manually change the AF (autofocus) settings from Auto Point to central AF point. This allows you to choose which players or part of the action to focus on, instead of the camera doing this for you (and possibly getting it wrong). In truth, I use the central AF point for nearly all of my photographs, whatever the situation, and it has not let me down to date.

I hope these few digital photography tricks prove helpful to you, and that you capture some successful and memorable shots in future.