In August I decided to combine two of my passions, photography and football. I’d spent a year learning photography and had spent almost all of that time taking either landscape or night sky photos but when I picked up a footballing injury at the end of July 2019 I decided to look at combining the two.

My first game. Image taken at Watlington Town FC, August 2019.

I didn’t have a clue what it would be like to take sports (football) photos and whether or not my gear was up to it.

I started with a couple of friendly games played between two local sides. They perhaps weren’t the best games to start with because they were evening games without floodlights, in early August. Hello low light, hello image noise!

At the time I was using my Nikon D3100 and a Sigma 70-300. The Sigma was ok but I soon found the D3100 was limited and wasn’t built for sports photography. It was the first photography I’d done which had shown the limitations of older and cheaper equipment.

After doing some local games I offered to take photos for a local Women’s team. I also got invited, through a friend, to take photos for a Southern League team (e.g. decent standard, small stand/stadium setup, FLOODLIGHTS!). The friend had been the club photographer and then moved to videographer so opened it up for me to do the photos.

A last minute cup winner, my most popular photo this season. Image taken at Thame Utd, October 2019.

My early experiences were ok. I’ve played football for 20 years, it’s my main passion/interest, I could read a game and predict where the ball was going (best you can) to be able to get some good shots.

Those initial experiences saw me capturing 900-1000 shots per game. That’s a LOT of post-processing and a LOT of waste, you only need 20-40 good pictures.

As it got to October I knew I wanted better kit. I was taking ok images but I wanted better. I could see the images professionals were taking, the clarity and precision were excellent, the noise non-existent.

I researched new kit and purchased a Nikon D500 and Tamron 70-200 G2, just over £2,000 of equipment.

It made an immediate difference. The Nikon D500 is a fantastic camera which is used by a lot of Sports and Wildlife photographers. It has a burst mode that can capture a high volume of images in one go which is much needed.

The Tamron only had a focal length of 200mm rather than the 300mm of the Sigma but it didn’t matter, the quality and sharpness made up for any loss in length.

As the season moved into winter new challenges came. In one particular game, it poured down in the first half and I didn’t have a cover so I used a plastic backpack cover over the lens and prayed water didn’t affect my kit!

Wet, wet, wet. Image taken at Thame Utd, October 2019.

Then you get the dark nights. At stadiums with good floodlights, it’s ok but at others, it’s quite hard. The D500 has good quality in higher ISOs so it’s manageable, you just have to bump up the ISO and reduce the noise in post-processing.

It’s a learning curve. For example, only in January did I realise I hadn’t been keeping the focus button pressed down whilst shooting! With that one tweak, I went from having 50-60% of shots in focus to 90% in focus. That doesn’t mean you still don’t miss some great action when the focus locks on to the wrong player, but that’s part of the challenge.

Learning how to shoot, how to edit, how to crop images has been a fun process. Some shots you need to fill the frame, others I like to leave it open - show the bigger context of the image. Maybe that means including some crowd, or the stadium, or a chasing defender. I edit for what I like, not what I think others will like.

It’s not the players but the crowd that make this shot. Taken at Didcot Town FC in February 2020.

The response to sports photography is great. A nice landscape image gets plaudits but sports photos are on a different level altogether. Clubs and fans share images, players thank you for them and plaster them on their Instagram - it’s very rewarding.

Above everything though, the most rewarding part has been capturing moments in the game I love. The joy, the despair, the laughter, the anger - a game full of emotions and moments which I have the pleasure of capturing so that they’re remembered forever.

Capturing moments. Image taken at Didcot Town, February 2020.

My journey in Sports Photography is only in Chapter 1, but it’s been an incredible experience so far and one I long to continue.

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far :-)

Simon.