How to Shoot Youth Sports PortraitsWith the Tamron AF 18-270mm VC lens, Chris Wunder has more than a sporting chance of nailing every individual player or team shot. |
Article By Jennifer Gidman Images by PortraitEFX |
Taking youth sports photography to the next level is Chris Wunder’s goal — and he’s using the Tamron AF 18-270mm VC lens to help reach it. “We’re trying to do things that are a little more creative,” says the Charlotte, North Carolina, photographer and president of PortraitEFX, Inc., a growing photography franchise company that offers a mix of photography programs serving the youth sports, school, early childhood, portrait directory, and event photography markets. |
The company’s Youth Sports Photography program is made up of photographers who range in experience from full-time pros to freelance contractors who work on the weekends. An individual photographer might shoot up to 600 players in just a few hours, in sports running the gamut from soccer and baseball to football — “everything from Little League to high school sports,” says Wunder. |
A versatile lens in these situations becomes a necessity. “For some of our part-time freelance help, capital equipment investment can be a major expense,” Wunder says. “That’s why we recommend the Tamron 18-270mm VC lens. For a reasonable investment, you get the flexibility of multiple lenses for about half the cost, and great optics to boot.” |
When doing individual player portraits and team shots, there’s not time to switch back and forth between lenses. “From wide angle to long-range telephoto, the 18-270 covers it all — and at less than 20 ounces and under 4 inches long at 18mm, it won’t be a drag on your shoulder strap,” Wunder says. “You can photograph teams and groups, even in a tight space, using the lens at a shorter focal length of 18mm to 28mm; take individual player photos in the 50mm to 75mm range; then twist the zoom ring to go in for head and shoulders and extreme close-ups in the 100mm to 200mm range. Finally, when you need to do either simulated or live-action photos, the lens reaches all the way out to 270mm for close to super-zoom results.” |
One valuable perk of the 18-270 on the often dusty baseball diamonds and soccer fields is its assistance in keeping the elements off of the camera’s sensor. “Because we typically photograph 400 to 800 player portraits per camera per day in our Youth Sports Photography program, getting dust on the sensor can mean a huge expense to Photoshop all those images to cover that spot,” he says. “The 18-270 stays on the camera body all day, which vastly reduces the potential for getting dust on the sensor.” |
Player Portraits |
Wunder does many of his player and team shots indoors. “We’ll line up the basketball or volleyball teams, for example, in the gym,” he says. “We’re shooting more outdoor sports indoors now using greenscreens — especially in northern parts of the country, we can get that outdoor look without it being freezing or snowing.” |
Although Wunder would ideally choose to shoot early or late in the day, when the sun is low in the sky, that’s not usually possible when you’re shooting 60 to 100 teams in one day. “You don’t have that luxury,” he says. “You’ll find yourself photographing from early morning till late afternoon.” |
Using fill flash helps compensate for unseemly shadows from caps or helmets. “We don’t do any team or individual photography that doesn’t use fill flash — we get light right under the brim of the hat,” says Wunder. |
When photographing in subdued light or shade outdoors, the 18-270’s Vibration Compensation (VC) technology facilitates getting sharp images at less-than-ideal shutter speeds. “Sometimes a tripod isn’t practical, because you need to be down around 1/30th of a second or 1/15th of a second,” says Wunder. “It’s difficult to handhold and get sharp images. With the VC, you can handle clear down to 1/30th or 1/60th and get sharp images of static subjects. If you’re shooting outside, or if you’re inside using flash, this lens easily does the job.” |
For individual player shots, Wunder and his crew don’t usually have to worry about camera-shy subjects. “Many of these young athletes are photographed twice a year, in the fall and spring seasons,” he says. “By the time they’re 6 or 7 years old, they’re veterans at getting their pictures taken — they know the drill.”
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The photographer only has an average of 39 seconds to work with each child. “We try to get at least two shots of that child in those 39 seconds,” Wunder says. “It would be impossible for a photographer to keep up that pace by himself, so we use posing assistants, typically high school athletes we hire on a part-time basis. They’re old enough to follow directions once we teach them; they’ve been getting pictures taken themselves for almost 12 years; and they also know the sport. Plus, I think talking to someone who’s more like an older brother or sister puts the younger kids at ease.” |
After a day of individual player shots, it’s time to craft a unique product that stands out from the crowd. “We’re able to create a product that not only shows the traditional static photo of the player holding the ball or bat, but we also composite that image with two additional images of the player in a simulated action pose,” Wunder says. “You might think it’s done in Photoshop, but it’s actually accomplished using proprietary high-speed imaging software that allows us to create a composite in 15 seconds.”
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A Team Effort |
For team shots, Wunder and his photographers have to work quickly. “The attention span of the average 5- to 7-year-old is about two minutes,” he laughs. “The younger they are, the quicker you have to work. We try to do the team photo in about five minutes.” |
Having an organized system in place is key to working at such a rapid pace and still getting great team portraits. “Many shutter moms might think you just throw kids into a straight line and that’s it,” Wunder says. “However, you need to know how to line the kids up based on their relative height —that makes it much faster to get a good symmetrical team photo.” |
If it’s a high-volume shoot (e.g., 800 to 1,000 kids in a morning), Wunder employs the posing assistants he uses for individual player shots. “An assistant can definitely help group posing go much faster,” he says. “But a skilled photographer only doing a team every 10 or 15 minutes can likely handle it on her own.” |
What helps keep a team shot on schedule are the posing and composition limitations. “You can’t get too crazy or wild with freestyle posing in team photos, because they’re often used in some sort of appreciation product, such as to the sponsor or coach,” says Wunder. “The format of those prints has to be a conventional format for the intended product — you can’t pose the players in a circle, for example.” |
Wunder’s photography team typically backlights most of the team photos to avoid the players squinting up into the sun. “Usually, this would raise a concern about the possibility of picking up lens flare from shooting almost parallel to the sun,” Wunder says. “However, the 18-270 handles this situation beautifully, and we get no discernible flare in backlight situations — particularly impressive considering that the lens has 18 individual elements, which is a lot of glass and curved surfaces that might mean trouble for some lenses. It’s also nice that the lens comes with a lens shade right out of the box.” |
Although time is of the essence in getting the perfect team shot, managing the masses is just as important. “You have to able to capture the expressions of 10 to 20 kids in a group simultaneously, with all kids looking in the right direction, hands down, all eyes open,” Wunder says. “In our field, we can’t afford to do head swaps on team photos because we missed getting someone’s eyes open. This is where we use what we call ‘crowd control,’ or ‘subject control’: We manage the environment, where the kids are looking and where the attention is given, and then try to capture the image. We only usually need to take between three or four images for team photos: Ninety percent of what we shoot, we get everyone’s eyes open in one shot!” |
For more information on PortraitEFX’s work, go to www.portraitefx.com or e-mail Chris Wunder at cwunder@portraitefx.com. |