Action Photography Tips

Photography tips from professional photographers vary as to their specific focus area. Action photography is a specific field of photography which covers sports as its main focus. In order to obtain action photography tips, you have to focus on the sport or type of action being photographed.

In order to get the best photograph, you'll need to set your ISO to the highest setting. On a point and shoot camera, you may have a dial which has a preset for sports. This will automatically set your camera on the best settings for shooting sports events and action shots.

Try to get as close to your subject as possible for the highest resolution. You don't want an entire playing field in the photo of your child's big sports moment. Think about what you want in the photo before taking the shot. If you want to be able to blow the photo up to an 8x10 or larger print, you'll want enough background on the sides of the photo to allow for cropping. Your viewfinder will show you a 4x6 print area.

On an SLR camera, you can pan the camera to blur the background. Hold the shutter button down half way and follow your subject before actually taking the shot. This will show the action in the photo by having the focus on your subject and not the background.

The best of sports photography tips are likely to catch the moment of action such as the ball in the air and not to miss the shot by being unprepared. You want to have your camera ready before the moment of action you want to capture takes place. You need to have the camera focused a second ahead or you'll miss your shot.

Focus on getting the player with the ball in the air when shooting baseball or basketball. Try to get a gymnast in mid air. Watch for swimmers to get a stroke of the arm above water. These types of shots will capture the action and make the best photographs.

Stop action photography takes practice so don't give up. Digital is the best way to practice so you have plenty of shots and can delete those empty space photos that you took a second too late. You'll get better with each shot you take. Good luck on a successful photo shoot!