8 Tips for Better Shooting on Sports Photography

　　After getting an action camera, you probably can’t wait to take photos or videos. The effect doesn’t seem to be very good, but how to get great results with your sports camera, the following 8 tips may be helpful.

　　1. Understand Your Camera

　　This must be one of the most important factors when it comes to sports photography. It’s essential to understand your camera, and all of its settings. Especially if you are working at fast moving circumstance, such as running, cycling, or motor sports. You’re going to need to change the shooting mode according to circumstances, and know your way around your action camera’s menu settings. Obviously, the best way to get to know your camera, is to get out there and use it as much as possible.

　　2. Understand Your Mounts

　　Whether your action camera is going on your bike, snowboard, helmet, or your dog, it pays to be familiar with your mount’s movement. A choppy film can be fun (for a few seconds) but only if you’ve planned it that way. Test the angles and the outcome before you start to film your shots. Mounting your action camera on the handlebars of your bike is significantly bumpier than a helmet-mount or chest-mount, since the body’s motion absorbs jolts more readily than the bars.

　　If you have the budget invest in an action camera gimbal. A gimbal is a motorized stabilizer that actively cancels out any vibrations and movements from your body to make the video footage silky smooth. They are well worth the investment if you are looking for professional footage.

　　3. Check Your Angles

　　Action cameras tend to have very wide angles lenses to pack in as much activity and scenery as possible. When shooting at 1080p, Gopro action camera offer wide, medium or narrow fields of view – we reckon the narrow or medium options are best as the lens is so wide anyway, and the extra-wide setting tends to result in a ‘barrel effect’ with lots of distortion around the edges.

　　4. Don’t Just Take One Shot

　　One of the best action camera photography tips I can give is to never just take a single shot.

　　If you look at the settings on your camera you may see that you just have the choice for each time lapse or burst shots.

　　By taking more than one shot you increase your chances of getting the ideal photo that you’re looking for and you don’t have to worry about any blurry or out of frame images

　　5. Less is More

　　There might be 90 minutes of footage to choose from in the editing process, but the best videos find a way to reduce that into 90 seconds. One person even reduced his average work day into one minute. A lot of user-generated content, they have this great adventure, but it’s six minutes long, you can tell a good story in two minutes. So be ruthless. Only choose the very great moments from you video and cut the others. People only want to see the best part.

　　6. Tell a Story

　　One thing that I always try to do when doing sports photography, is to tell a story. As tempting as it may be to concentrate solely on the action, sometimes it’s the wider selection of images which are needed in order to build a good, strong body of sports photography. Try photographing portraits, close ups of equipment, sports lifestyle photographs, or scenes which are associated to the sports which you are working with. Generally you wish your photos to be read like a book, and engage the viewer.

　　7. Keep an Eye on the Battery Life

　　Nothing is worse than going to take a video as you drop into an untracked powder field to find that your action camera has run out of batteries. There are 2 ways in which you will be able to easily manage the battery life on your camera.

　　Be religious about charging your action camera every day. And switch it off between shots. I know from experience that this is hard to do.

　　Alternatively, I would recommend that you can purchase a few spare batteries and bring them with you. This way you don’t ever have to leave your sports camera behind the charge and running out of battery life will become one less thing you to worry about.

　　8. Try Something New

　　Don’t be afraid to try something new. Maybe use a different mode than you normally would, or maybe even utilize a selection of creative filters. To create a amazing sports photograph, you need to think outside of the box. There are a great deal of fantastic photographers out there, all creating outstanding photos, each and every day. What will you do to be different?