5 // Tennis

I recently developed a terrible case of tennis elbow. Though I felt my elbow feeling shifty a couple months back, I stupidly ignored it and played even harder. Now the pain has spread to the lower tricep and upper forearm on my right arm. The pain has even begun to make everyday things difficult: going to the gym, getting a glass of water, hell even unplugging my phone makes me wince. Because of this, I’ve decided to try a revolutionary treatment plan: rest. And this time I ain’t just saying it! Now since I can’t play tennis, I’ll just have to shoot and write about tennis.

For some reason, I remember picking up tennis again exactly on July 5th, 2016. I messed around with the sport when I was kid, struggling to hit the ball and when I did, it just went over the fence. Like all sports, the performance roadmap is fulfilling, perhaps more so than other sports for me. I think it’s because of the sheer dexterity and understanding of all the mechanics needed to hit the damn thing that makes it so rewarding figure it out. Needless to say, it takes a long time to get proficient at it.

Once you do figure it out, the act is incredibly soothing, almost like throwing a baseball or Frisbee around, but 10x cooler. Just rallying around with another player, hitting medium paced forehands and backhands down the middle of the court over and over again is relaxing in a rhythmic sort of way. It’s a task that takes practice to get comfortable with but is easy enough to let your instincts take over a bit. It straddles and sometimes allows you to enter that “flow state” where every ball is snapping off your racket at just the right speed and direction. It’s essentially the closest thing you can do to feeling like a god damn Jedi.

And just like the Jedi, the temptation to turn to the dark side is always there. Similar to other individual sports, you’re your best friend or your worst enemy. Missing a couple of easy gimme forehands can send the most composed player into a fit of self-directed beratement. If the stakes are higher, frustration is often directed externally as well (think McEnroe or Roddick). It’s an exercise within itself to remain composed when you’re not playing at your best.

And a quick aside speaking of the dark side, lets all remember the incredibly badass “Darth Federer” outfit Fed had on at the 2007 US Open!

These are the two things you really want to capture when you’re shooting a tennis match: form and emotion. You want to capture the physical form and act of hitting a tennis ball. You want to see motion conveyed through the racket and power from the body. You also need to see the emotional determination written on someone’s face, either of Zen or agitation.

There are a few things you can do to maximize your chances of shooting compelling sports photos. Keep in mind the tips from shooting ultimate Frisbee applies here too.

  1. Shoot in Aperture Priority - it’s helpful to shoot with shutter priority mode to control the amount of motion blur from the racket swing but still lock in a player’s face. This method works well in daytime shooting but can cause issues when working in low light situations. The lower the available light, the more your camera will open up the aperture and reducing your DOF. In many cases, shooting at these shallow DOFs will make tack sharp focusing very difficult. In this case, set up focusing traps and try out the third tip.

  2. Fast Zoom Telephoto Lens – having a “fast” lens is almost always desirable since it gives the shooter more creative control over what shot they want to achieve. However, in sports photography, it’s essential to have a good fast zoom lens because you can only get as close the sidelines, and in most cases you won’t even be that close. The zoom lens allows you to change the framing of the photo, thus allows you to either isolate and focus on certain elements or capture as much context as you can.

  3. Spray and Pray – getting sharp photos in high speed photography is incredibly difficult. There is a constant struggle over getting the player’s face tack sharp while still achieving an aesthetic level of DOF, and it can be incredible frustrating. Most pros shoot in a deeper DOF (higher aperture > f1.8) and crank up the ISO to still shoot at a high shutter speed. They’ll also have camera bodies that can shoot over 10 FPS and essentially spray and pray to get at least one usable shot. You should do that as well. There’s a stigma labeling spray and pray as artless and mindless but with sports photography, especially during a live game, you don’t have the luxury of perfectly composing your shots. Of course you should always try to consciously make these artistic decisions and mentally frame your shots but keep both methods in hand. Save the high horse mentality and spray and pray away!

4 // DropMix

DropMix is a rhythm-based card game that uses some borderline magical technology to seamlessly create mash-up mixes of famous songs and artists. The game comes with a wide plastic board/controller that can detect cards that are placed on it. These specific DropMix cards are individual songs with an attached musical components to them via an NFC chip (think the drums of Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out or Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe Vocals, two of my favorite cards).

You then download the game app onto your smartphone, connect the phone to the board and prop up your phone up to the unit. As you place cards down into the platform slots, the app builds a mash-up with the musical components on the board in almost real-time. These mash-ups in reality only 32 bars long but amount of variety and control you have is pretty liberating. Not only can you assemble mash-ups from any five card combination, you can adjust the BPM and which key the segment plays in. You can also buy additional themed card packs that expand your creative toolbox but can be rather expensive.

Besides this musical playground, the app come with a couple of other game modes, including a surprisingly competitive “Clash” mode where two competing players try to reach 21 points first by laying down the appropriate sequence of cards on the board. Still, the main selling point of this game is the creative freedom it offers with almost no required expertise in music. Anybody can pick this up and make a catchy tune within a few minutes.

I picked this game up when it was on sale a few months ago and subsequently forgot I had it in the back of my closet. After bring it to a couple of get togethers, I rediscovered that this game has an almost mystifying ability to bring people in and get their heads bobbing. Here are some of my favorite mixes and an example of the music you can easily create with this game.

3 // Portfolio Retrospective

2012-2016 (Olympus E-500 with 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6)

The first DSLR I ever used was my dad’s Olympus E-500. It was a dinky 8MP shooter that introduced me to manual control. Learning the exposure triangle is 10x easier when you have the camera right in your hand. The 14-45mm kit lens was slow and clunky, perfect for learning the importance of f-stop, shutter speed and the gloriousness of sunlight. Almost everything I shot worth showing was outside because I had no lighting knowledge or equipment; I mainly shot close friends and my ultimate Frisbee pickup games.

At 45mm, the kit lens was f5.6 which meant any attempt at decent bokeh required the foreground subject to be hella far away from the background. These portraits were the result of me taking a bunch of blurry ass pictures before realizing I needed more light and a larger aperture. It’s a start right?

Milestones: basic exposure triangle, basic manual control

2016-2018 (Canon Rebel t5i with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 and 50mm f/1.8)

I bought my first DLSR two years ago; it was the Canon Rebel t5i and included the kit lens and heavy ass PIXMA photo printer. I remember how excruciatingly slow the 1-3 business days of it took for shipping. Beside constantly checking on the UPS tracker, I watched countless video reviews on the camera before it got it. Classic post-purchase rationalization.

The t5i body more than doubled my previous MP count and had a whole host of fancy features I had to learn, primarily back button focusing which is great. Still, shooting with the kit lens was still underwhelming. It was still difficult to get the deep bokeh blur and I still had to shoot primarily outside. From this, I learned that the ISO quality and capabilities of a camera body was incredibly important.

After a couple of months, the lack of dramatic improvements from my previous camera made me worry. The basic conveniences of having a newer body was great but I wanted my pictures to look better. I needed a new lens and more light.

Similar to most photographers, my next purchase was Canon’s 50mm f/1.8 STM. The 2015 version was still affordable and came with some improvements from version II. At the time, I knew that putting a full-frame lens on a crop sensor body meant I had to apply the APS-C crop factor (x1.6) but I DID NOT KNOW that the crop factor also applied to the f-stop as well. I effectively had an 80mm f2.8 lens which was enough to see an immediate improvement in photo quality. From that point on, I pretty much just shot with the fifty wide open which meant I had to get familiar with chromatic aberration.

My portraits were looking cleaner and had that background blur I wanted; I was happy with it! At the same time, I started to shoot RAW and learned some Lightroom basics. Most of my edits were just fixing lens distortion and making the greens more “summery”. I generally had some sort of vignetting, either from the lens or from LR in these photos.

Milestones: importance of ISO capabilities and quality, how to get better and easier bokeh, importance of quality glass, crop factoring

2018-Present (Canon 6D with 50mm f/1.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8)

A couple of months ago, I upgraded to a full-frame Canon body and bought the Tamron 70-200mm. The body gave me a couple more MP but more importantly, a larger sensor. Not only could I take advantage of my lens’ entire aperture, but I also had better low light performance with a larger sensor.

Using a fast 70-200mm lens brought a change in how I thought about prime and zoom lens. My initial thought was that prime lens were superior to zooms and I almost took pride in having to use my legs to change up framing. But after using the zoom, the conveniences of all that zoom is incredible and more often allows you to frame what’s in your head more quickly.

Another apparent advantage was ISO performance and capture in low-light situations. I’m not exactly sure of the exact reason why the sensor performs better in low light (if larger sensors are inherently better at collecting light or if the quality of the sensor is simply superior or both) but being able to comfortably shoot at upwards of 6400 ISO if I needed to is very nice. With my previous T5i, the excessive digital noise rendered all ISO settings past 1600 useless.

I’m glad I upgraded to the full-frame sensor. The improvement of quality and shooting conveniences are substantial, especially for the price. Even the body feels more ergonomic and robust, adding confidence for me to take it out in less than ideal conditions. Still, all the equipment in the world doesn’t make one a better photographer and there’s always more to learn with photography. But it’s nice to take a look back once in a while and seeing my work improving over time. Here’s to more photographs.

Milestones: learning basic flash photography with speedlite and light modifiers, basic Adobe Premier and After Effects editing for time/hyperlapses, full frame goodness

2 // Ultimate Frisbee

Ultimate Frisbee, my first love! I was never particularly an athletic kid growing up, in fact, I was just the opposite. My mom would remark on how clumsy I was: tripping over my own feet, tumbling down stairs, and on more than one occasion, falling into rivers. Still, my parents encouraged me to take on a couple of sports as a youngster: soccer, roller hockey, karate, and tennis. Soccer was the only sport that I played for more than a year, but that didn't mean I was any better at it than any other sport. 

It wasn't until college when I discovered my dormant passion for sports, and it started with Ultimate Frisbee. For those who aren't in the know, Ultimate Frisbee (or referred to as "Ultimate" by dorks) is a non-contact sport with the objectives of American Football and the movements of Football Football (Soccer?). Although chaotic at first, most people get the hang of it after a few minutes. Its a surprisingly cardio-centric game with the focus of knowing when to run as opposed to being able to run the entire time (which would help too).

My introduction to Ultimate was as serendipitous as my roommate situation when I got to college. Without securing a roommate before moving into on-campus housing, I sprung for complete rando's and lucked out because each of my roommates were cool cats. We spent pretty much most of our time together, which I thought was pretty special since we all had different background and interests.

And one of those interests was Ultimate Frisbee. One the first night I learned to play the game, I was desperately trying to remember the rules but would trip up every time there was a turnover. In Ultimate, turnovers happen extremely quickly giving the offensive team to make an immediate play if the defense isn't ready (which they usually aren't). And I remember so vividly, after one of the games, I literally dropped to my knees in exhaustion; and I've been hooked every since.

Ultimate Frisbee photography shares many of the challenges of conventional sports photography:  high speed with low light, focusing (harder for entry level cameras equipped with only contrast detection AF systems), distance from subject, and anticipation of the next big play. 

There are a few things that you can optimize to make your sports photography standout.

  1. Fast Telephoto Lens - having a lens in this range is pretty much a given. In almost all scenarios, you'll be relatively stationary or shuffling around a few spots but most of the action will be taking place a good distance away from you; the action will also be happening fast. Without a fast lens, you'll be forced to resort to either higher ISO levels or slow shutter speeds just to have a decently exposed photo. Unfortunately this will make the photos look too blurry or to noisy (respectively). It took me a while to realize what the term "fast lens" meant since I always correlated the word "fast" with the shutter speed; I knew the shutter speed was controlled by the body so how could a lens be fast? What it "fast lens" means is that the lens itself is a large aperture (generally <f/3.5), which allows more light to hit the image sensor in the same amount of time, effectively letting the user to shoot at quicker shutter speeds with lower ISO while still letting in ample light resulting in a crisper and properly exposed photo. The combine flexibility of zoom and low light capabilities make a fast telephoto lens essential for sports photography. However there are exceptions, primarily if most of the shooting will be taken during the day, the aperture isn't much a factor anymore and you'd be find shooting at >f/4. In-lens image stabilization isn't too important either since the shutter speeds you'd be shooting at to ensure a sharp picture would also take out the hand shakes (this could also be remedied by a simple mono-pod as well).

  2. Phase Detection Auto-focusing (AF) System - Okay so I've watched multiple videos on different auto-focusing systems in modern day DSLRs and mirrorless set ups and only have gleaned the surface level knowledge of the technologies. Still I understand enough for practical use. There is absolutely no way you could manual focus on sports action, things are moving way too quickly for manual focusing which is even harder if you imagine zooming in and out at the same time. We need to rely on AF technology to hit focus. There are two main types of AF systems: Contrast Detection and Phase Detection. For all intents and purposes, contrast detection is an older technology that is, although still effective, slower and relatively less accurate than that of the newer phase detection technology. Phase detection will hit focus faster and more accurately (usually with more AF points as well) than a contrast detection AF system meaning you'll be able to produce more in focused and usable pictures at the end of the day (though you can still achieve similar results with contrast AF, just not as frequently). Phase detection AF systems are found on more higher end DSLR camera models and most mirror-less cameras nowadays.

  3. Big Play Instinct - this is the more intangible tip for sports photography. Having a strong base knowledge of the sport you're shooting would obviously help. You got to know where all the big plays could possibly happen and be quick enough to snap to it, focus, recompose the frame and shoot which is easier said than done. A good idea is to shoot with both eyes open so you can see your viewfinder and the peripheral action taking place as well. Still, sometimes you can't beat luck and you'll pull some amazing shots without realizing it. The trick is to maximize the number of times you get lucky and you can do that starting with these three things.