Sports Photography in a Digital Age

There’s nothing like the Olympics and its flood of imagery to demonstrate the impact of state of the art photography equipment. The latest crop of high end digital SLRs used by sport photographers are in fact single purpose computers fitted with imaging chips, lenses and some mechanical parts. It is especially significant in action and therefore sport photography. Images are sharper, more color accurate, have a three dimensional quality and are extremely vivid as a result. In the hands of a competent photographer, photographs are substantially (visually, and technically) better than they were only a few years ago. Arguably, this may also have an impact on the narrative communicated through photos of this genre. It is my opinion that the introduction and recent mass adoption of digital SLRs are the single most important reason for this development. 

(link to Stern.be – one of the best collections I’ve seen to date)

There are a number of reasons why digital photography’s impact:

• Superior imaging chips – image sensors now surpass film, at least in the 35mm world.
• Very high resolution images- image sensors offer very high resolution, packaged in Digital SLR bodies. The closes equivalent were medium format cameras (e.g. film based Hasselblads), and those  were too slow and cumbersome for sport photography
• Unprecedented low light (high ISO) handling. No one thinks twice about shooting in 1000 ISO. Film sensitivity of this magnitude (practically unavailable in the past) would have created impossible grain (except for the purpose of artistic expression). Shooting in low light conditions with very high ISO figures, looks great ‘out of the (digital) box’, and even better with simple post-processing noise filters.
• Virtually unlimited number of shots- I call this the ‘room full of monkeys’ effect (“..a room full of monkeys will eventually write a Shakespearean play..”). The cost per exposure dropped to practically nothing. This allows photographers and photo editors to capture more so called ‘decisive moments’.
• Immediate feedback – seeing what you shoot immediately is ‘self correcting’ both immediately when you shoot, and as a learning tool over time. I suspect it takes less time for modern photographers to learn and accomplish the same technical results compared to their film only predecessors

© Michael Kappeler/AFP/DDP

So how difficult is it to produce excellent photos in major sporting events compared to other photographic genres?  I do not have substantive experience shooting sports, but I believe that doing so is a little like shooting fish in a barell. This is especialy the case now that many of the technical issues photographers faced in the past are gone.
It definitely requires some talent. But it’s not that hard (putting aside long hours, phisical exertion etc.). The quality delta (relatively speaking) separating a very good photograph from its sublime counterpart is now shifted upwards along the quality scale. It is therefore much harder, to produce (comparatively) photos that could be called ’sublime’. In other words, what used to be ’sublime’ is now seen as merely ‘very good’. There are more photographers producing great photographs, more often. Sporting events dish out drama almost as fast as a state of the art digital SLR camera can handle continous exposures.
Most locations are well lit for this purpose specifically. Sport photographers are given fantastic vantage points from which to shoot. And the tools with which to shoot, are as good as they ever been. Take a Canon 1DS (or Nikon D3 – dpends on your religion of choice), coupled with 400mm or more IS lens, put it on top of a light weight monopod, and you’re pretty much set. Don’t get me wrong: without some talent little will be produced. But I would guess that nature photographers, landscape photographers, never mind fine art photographers, are facing more demanding subject matter from which to extract very high quality images.

© Nicolas Asfouri/AFP