The London 2012 Olympics are here! Did you know…
London is the only city to have hosted the Olympics three times
26 Olympic sports and 19 Paralympic sports will be played at this year’s Olympics with a total of 302 events, 10500 athletes and 2100 medals. There were only 43 events in the first modern Games in 1894.
8,000 people will have carried the Olympic torch through 1,018 towns and cities
Women’s boxing will make its Olympic debut at the London Games.
Any streakers will be fined up to £20,000!
See lots of interesting facts about the Olympics
Photo Tips – Photographing Athletes
If you’re off to the Olympics you will want to get some good photos to put on your website. Sports people move; whether it’s ‘slowly’ before throwing the javelin or cycling fast around the velodrome.
The technical aspects of shooting motion are easy: a fast shutter speed (or the action or sports setting) will freeze motion whereas a slow one will introduce motion blur of the background. Anywhere in between makes the difference between a static shot or a creative one that uses action to paint a scene.
Here’s how to get great pictures at the track.
1. Scout the track
Look for the best angles and if you can move around, look for the most dramatic places. Look for angles where you don’t have fences, posts or wires in view.
Oval tracks have the benefit that you can usually see half the track from one location. Zoom in to cut out some of the distracting objects or people.
2. Shutter speed
Start off with a fast shutter speed of 1/500 second which will minimize camera shake (or use the action or sports setting). If you have really steady hands, or use a monopole, you may be able to shoot slower. Depth of field is less important than shutter speed, but f8 is a pretty safe. Increase the ISO if you have to.
4. Shoot
There are a few proven techniques; one is to set your camera to continuous auto focus and burst drive. As soon as your subject comes into view, focus on his/her number and follow it with the camera. Keep shooting until they have passed. For fast sports, most cameras’ auto focus will have a hard time keeping up with the pace so another method is to turn off the auto focus, manually focus on a particular spot and wait until an athlete comes into the frame.
This works particularly well in corners, if athletes are slightly slower for a short period. A more difficult method is to set the camera on a slower shutter speed and pan with the action (ie move your camera with the subject), so that you capture the subject in focus and the background is blurred.
5. Shoot lots
Your first shots are likely to be blurry, badly composed or have some other flaw and you’ll probably delete many of them. Much of the time you’ll be pointing the camera at something and hoping. But stick at it and your keep rate will rise dramatically.
6. After you’ve mastered the basics of getting well-composed, non-blurry shots, start getting creative.
Try some panning shots at slow shutter speeds and some shots at large apertures. Shoot into the sun.
Shoot the facial expressions of the athletes and don’t forget the actions or expressions of the Umpires and Referees.
Photo Tip – Capture the unique or unusual details
It’s holiday season! Make your website more interesting by looking beyond the normal tourist shots. That world-famous historic building may be stunning but people will have seen many images of it before. The best photographs tell a story. They can be humorous or poignant, or can just capture the character and culture of a place.
Our tip? – Don’t point your camera in the same direction as everyone else – be ever alert for those unique photo opportunities that you won’t necessarily see elsewhere. When travelling, observe the dress of the people, the food that they sell in the markets, their transport, their crafts, how they decorate their houses.
By all means photograph the main sites as well, but if you include some observations of everyday life in your collection you will come back with a much more rounded photographic diary of the place you visited.
Use a 350pages Photo Gallery with thumbnail images and a slideshow to share your collection with your friends and family and all the visitors to your website.
