This past week, I covered a variety of Missouri athletics events. Soccer played its last non-conference match, volleyball took on Stanford for a top 25 matchup and the football team (and fans) braved 90-plus degree heat in a win against the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns. Without further ado, here are the photos of the week.
For this photo, I was positioned just to the side of the goal and facing the field. Just as Chianelli was about to perform a corner kick, I made sure to turn my body towards her. The
stadium was pretty dark, which forced me to increase my camera’s sensitivity to light, but I made sure my shutter speed was high enough to stop the action. I really liked that for this shot we can see the aftermath of her kicking the ball with her leg still in the air, the ball still in frame and her eyes watching as it flies through the air. As much as we’d love to see more fans in the stands cheering on Mizzou’s soccer team, I do also appreciate that there’s not a bunch of different colors behind her to make the background more busy.
Photojournalism is always a bit unpredictable. I mentioned last week that we have to follow certain ethical standards, including not staging photos. This photo is obviously not staged, but it’s easier to know where to position yourself to get the best sports coverage because it’s somewhat repetitive and predictable. But no matter how much pre-planning we can do as far as positioning goes, we can’t necessarily predict exactly what will happen at any given time. In this shot, Devrouax is kicking the ball through Smith’s legs. I couldn’t have known that would happen, but I’m happy I was positioned in the best spot to make this picture.
When shooting volleyball (and honestly, any sport), it’s easy to get pictures of things that happen repeatedly and in the same place, like serves. Once the ball starts moving, however, it can be a bit harder to follow and know where to focus your camera next to get the best shot. I knew that I wanted to get a photo of a Missouri player spiking the ball, but I needed to make sure her face was somewhat visible. I made sure to find a spot to stand where I was able to get a good view of the side of the net the Tigers were playing on, and waited with my camera looking in the right area to get that specific photo. In this case, Stanford’s Erika Sayer blocked the ball while Missouri’s Regan Haith was still touching it and I was able to get this photo of both players interacting with the ball.
If you couldn’t already tell, I love overhead angles. Having that clean background just adds so much to the composition and makes it that much more visually appealing. Here, we have the volleyball team celebrating a point during the match against no. 5 Stanford. I really love how we can see all of their faces and that their expressions are so passionate. Despite having lost the match, I still think it’s a strong photo that shows the effort the team put in.
Another week, another photo where I unintentionally make Marquis Johnson look bad…oops… This photo was made from the “fumble” in the first quarter that resulted in a Louisiana touchdown, which was eventually overturned for a Missouri touchdown. Instead of following the Louisiana player who had recovered the ball, which wouldn’t have really made sense considering the focal length of the lens I was using, I decided to focus on Johnson’s reaction to the mistake. Here, he’s holding his head in his hands, showing visible disappointment. All’s well that ends well, though.
One thing my professors and peers have emphasized to me regarding sports coverage is to get tighter shots. Zoom in, either with the lens or physically by moving your feet, to the action to get closer details. This would probably be considered more of a “medium” shot than a tight one since we can still see a lot of the players’ bodies, but I try to keep that advice in mind whenever I take photos of sports. Here, I did a similar thing to the Johnson photo above where I made sure to focus on the key figure of the play to get a reaction photo, and I got this nice interaction between Pribula (9) and his teammates while he celebrates his touchdown.
The next photo is another good example of getting tighter sports action images. I was asked to get more photos of the Missouri defense for this game, so I made sure to follow along as the line of scrimmage moved while Louisiana had the ball. Normally, I’d try to follow the ball wherever it moved, but because I needed to get photos of specific defenders, I instead chose to focus on those players individually during each play. What I love about this photo is that we can see both players’ helmets with each team’s logo, there’s a degree of symmetry in their placement in the composition and the background is pretty solidly gold, which adds an extra degree of separation between the players and the crowd.
This last photo is probably my favorite of the week. Like I mentioned last week, after each win the players run up to the student section to celebrate together. Not many people stayed all the way to the end of the game this week due to the excessive heat, but several dedicated students stayed the entire time. One of these members was Avery Adams, a leader of the student section, AKA “The Zou.” Adams played rock, paper, scissors with multiple Missouri players, so I had multiple opportunities to get different angles of the interaction, and this one ended up being the best in my opinion.
I love reading the comments, so feel free to share any thoughts you have! Thanks for following along this week!
