When doing sport photography such as gymnastics, you need to follow simple guidelines to take professional-level photos. The most important thing during a gymnastics photoshoot is to stabilize your camera.
It will allow you to capture moving subjects without any blur. This way, you can take photos of gymnasts during competitions or capture them when they are following their daily routine.
If you need to take a photo of groups of athletes, capture everything that happens on the floor and create a well-balanced composition. It’s important to avoid distracting gymnasts when you take photos.
Similarly to dance photography, this genre requires thorough preparation. You should learn more about athletes and find out when they will be present on the floor. It will allow you to plan your shooting and take photos in different locations using the right angles.
Once you know photos of which athletes you want to get, you can organize the shooting process better. When doing gymnastics photography, you need to decide how to capture gymnasts during each rotation. It will allow you to capture the most important moments of an event.
If you can’t visit large gymnastics competitions, try shooting amateur events instead. It will help you gradually develop your skills.
You can also practice when doing basketball photography or football photography. Some photographers also visit local dance or athletics competitions to learn how to shoot in different situations.
When taking photos of gymnasts or doing tennis photography, photographers should wear dark clothes. It allows them to blend with their surrounding and avoid distracting athletes.
If you go to the event in flamboyant clothing, it might make it difficult for athletes to focus. As the result, they might make a mistake, which might lead to a serious injury.
Similarly to soccer photography, this genre requires you to take photos from the perimeter of the floor where a gymnastics event takes place. The good thing is that photographers are allowed to walk around the perimeter, which allows them to take photos from different angles.
For instance, you can capture running athletes so that it would look as if they were running directly at you. To take photos of the beam, it’s better to stand on the side. You may come closer to capture all the important details.
When doing gymnastics event photography, don’t take photos in auto mode, as it’s better to adjust the settings manually instead. I use the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III as my main camera. It supports impressive auto-focusing even when you take photos at the speed of 16 fps.
I always use AI Servo mode to ensure that the focus will track the object. It increases my chances of taking a clear gymnastics image. Due to the high sensor sensitivity, I can take beautiful photos even when I work in poor-light situations.
This camera for sport photography stands out for impressive AF capabilities, as its camera is fitted with a new AF sensor that supports a 28 times higher resolution than the previous model.
It relies on improved auto-focusing algorithms and deep-learning technology. Due to this, it supports focus tracking, which is especially important for taking great gymnastics pictures.
When shooting gymnastics events, photographers often need to work in halls and poorly-lit areas. The best choice for such situations is to use fast prime and telephoto lenses.
It’s advisable to take photos with a 400mm f2.8 lens, such as the Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L or a 70-200mm f2.8 lens, such as the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III.
If you need to work on the event floor, I recommend you use a 24-70mm f2.8 lens, for instance, the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L or 100mm f2.8 lens, such as the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L.
Regardless of your level of experience, you may also use fisheye lenses and lens filters. To make your photos more eye-catching, you may use a star filter when you need to shoot by pointing your camera upward.
This rule is important for every photographer interested in taking pictures of people doing gymnastics. To shoot fast-moving subjects, you need to use the smallest shutter speed, as it will allow you to achieve the perfect brightness and avoid taking blurry photos with noticeable shadows.
It will suffice to use a shutter speed of 1/1000 to capture a moving object. If you use a higher shutter speed, you might notice some issues in your photo.
I often use high aperture, such as f/2.8 or f/4. It allows me to make the background blurred and emphasize the movement that I want to capture when doing gymnastics photography.
Besides, a large aperture and shallow depth of field allow me to use the min shutter speed. My camera supports a 1/8000 shutter speed, which allows me to achieve the perfect exposure when taking photos on sunny days.
Professional photographers shoot sports events with a high shutter speed, such as 1/1000. However, they might need to take photos outside when the sun is shining brightly, in the room, or even at night.
To avoid increasing the shutter speed and get sharp images, photographers use higher ISO values. For instance, a popular sports photographer Erin Long takes photos using an ISO value of 1600.
You might worry whether the quality of your photos might decrease due to such noise. If you use professional full frame cameras, such as the Nikon D850 or Canon 5D Mark IV, you don’t need to worry about noise. Even when you use max ISO values, your photos will still look great. However, if you have a budget camera, you will have to compromise.
If you have some gymnastics pictures to do, avoid using flash. You will likely stay far away from your subject. When shooting in the arena with artificial lighting, you might get photos that are too yellow.
You can fix this problem by adjusting the white balance. It can be either adjusted beforehand or fixed later if you use Adobe Lightroom for enhancing your photos.
If you select the JPEG format, you will be able to take photos much faster. Besides, it will allow you to save a lot of space on your memory card. Many photographers prefer to use the JPG format for shooting gymnastics, as they don’t need to perform advanced post-processing.
During championships and Olympic games, you can notice plenty of photo reporters and photojournalists. The latter focus on shooting fans to capture their emotions and funny situations.
There is no need to use a high-end lens for sport photography to become a good sports photographer. You just need to know how to capture the emotions of fans cheering for their teams.
If you want to speed up your workflow when using such photo editing software as Adobe Photoshop, you can use these actions to achieve the desired effect in a few clicks. They are available free of charge. Using them, you can spend less time on tedious tasks and enhance your gymnastics images more quickly.
