Action Photography Tips

Not surprisingly, pointers related to taking good portraits are quite different than action photography tips. Whether you are covering a local sports event or you are simply taking pictures of other quickly moving objects, action photography could be one of the most exciting things you can do with your digital camera.

The greatest challenge related to action photography has to do with the fact that your subject is likely moving at a very fast pace. In this way, most of the action photography tips that you will read are related to overcoming or accommodating for this concern.

Because of this fast movement, it's unlikely that you'll be able to take any quality action shots using [[small camera phones and other basic cameras. You can still achieve a good deal of success with a quality point-and-shoot, however, so don't feel that you absolutely need to invest in an expensive digital SLR setup.

As with all kinds of picture-taking, photography enthusiasts will have many different schools of thought when it comes to action photography tips. In this way, take the following tips as guidelines or a launching point for your photographic adventure. Don't be afraid to try different settings and styles to see which best suit your preferences.

While this may not be particularly useful for sports photography, it can be valuable to allow for some blur in your pictures to give a sense of movement. A popular experimental photography technique is to extend the shutter speed on a digital camera so that it is exposed for a second (or more) at a time.

More specifically, some of the best nighttime cityscape photographs are those that make use of this "long exposure" method, resulting in long red and orange streaks along the highways and other roads. These are the cars driving by. Adjusting the shutter speed further, you may also be able to achieve the effect of seeing a blur of moving cars while retaining the stationary appearance of the buildings and other structures.

Even when you are buying a cheap consumer camera, be sure to look for what options you have for adjusting the aperture and shutter speed. These can give you the opportunity for plenty of experimentation for action shots.

Depending on the situation, it may be more appropriate to capture an exact moment in time with little to no motion blur at all. In general, beginner's photography will dictate that you want to reduce the blur as much as possible, so this is more of a traditional school of thought. The photo of the surfer above, for example, adheres to this kind of philosophy.

To best achieve this kind of "frozen in time" effect, you may need to invest in a quality DSLR with an appropriate lens. However, satisfactory results can also be achieved with point-and-shoot digital cameras as well, assuming that they have enough manual controls to override the automatic settings.

As with the motion blur method described above, action photography tips for "frozen" pictures will be largely related to shutter speed and the aperture. Shorten the shutter speed as much as possible and make the aperture as large as possible. Depending on the lighting conditions, you may want to utilize a flash as well. For a simpler solution, you can try the "sports" mode on most cameras as well. This is represented by a "running man" icon.

One of the often overlooked action photography tips involves color saturation. Though part of this will come from the white balance settings on your digital camera, much more of the effect can be achieved through post-processing in a program like Photoshop. Heavily saturated colors may not be appropriate for a soccer game, per se, but the strong colors can do wonders for "moving" cityscapes and other action shots. As always, don't be afraid to experiment.

The "frozen in time" style of action photography described earlier may be difficult for a handheld camera, because your hands will inevitably cause a little bit of camera shake. Using a tripod (or monopod) can significantly aid in this concern, as can a camera with proper optical image stabilization.

It can be cumbersome to lug around a tripod, but if you know you'll be situated in the same location for sports photography for instance, it's much easier to get set up and stay put.

Do you have any tips on how to take good pictures of moving objects? Have some action photography tips that really emphasize the "action" of a shot? Feel free to share your thoughts through the comment form below.

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