Wednesday, February 9, 2011

My Experience Shooting Volleyball

I shot my first volleyball game last night, and I’ll tell you right now, it wasn’t easy at first. Sure, I knew the game well and had seen some games before but had never be able to shoot one. You have to use that brain of yours to figure out a strategy that is going to get you a decent shot. Only to add to my dilemma, the lighting was absolutely terrible. I don’t think it could have gotten any worse. I was in our school gym. Shooting at ISO 6400 and trying to figure out a strategy was definitely not easy but I managed.

Volleyball is a very fast paced game. There was no resting unless I was in between sets. Even then, I only had 2 minutes. In case you were wondering, I was shooting with my Canon EF-S 18-200mm and my Canon 50D. Luckily, there was two games that I was shooting that night, so the first game was kind of a crash course in Volleyball photography. I’ll tell you, that crash course was rough. My strategy by the end of the first game was when the opposite/opponent was serving, I watched them service it while having my camera pointed at the team I was shooting. I would figure out a general spot where I thought the ball was going to land and trained my camera on that spot, looked into the viewfinder, and started shooting. This all happens while the player is serving and while the ball is in midair. I ended up with some pretty decent shots after I figured out a strategy. Unfortunately, I can’t contribute any of those shots to the blog as they were shot at the school of students and players and they can’t be released. Sorry about that! I hope my experience was helpful and you found it interesting!

~Jacob

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