The secrets of taking sports shots

Shooting location - try to pick a position that produces a clean background to enable you to isolate your subject. Look for solid areas to shoot into such as trees, fields or hills. Generally man-made objects, signs, barriers and hoardings cause distraction and should be avoided.

If clean backgrounds are hard to find, try getting down low and shooting up with the sky behind your subject.

Use the right equipment – most sport subjects will benefit from getting in close to the action. A good zoom lens, or one with a long focal length will help you to get close. The EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM is a good lens to choose.

Long focal length lenses also help to isolate your subject from the background by compressing perspective.

Continuous shooting – using a camera with a fast continuous shooting mode increases your chances of getting the shot at the peak of the action. However, it still requires you to spend time watching the action, trying to predict the optimal point to press the shutter.

Camera settings – if the light is constant, i.e. a sunny day with no clouds or indoors under artificial lighting, set your camera to manual. Fixing the exposure in this way allows you to ensure the correct exposure on your subject. If using one of the automatic modes when shooting into the sky your camera will tend to underexpose your subject resulting in a silhouette. If this does occur use the exposure compensation dial to increase the exposure.

Look for the unexpected – be on the lookout for something unusual or extraordinary. Often the best sports images are the ones that make you look twice and question how that happened. Much of this is down to the luck of being in the right place at the right time but the skill is being prepared for anything.

Shoot around the action – by this we mean also focus your attention away from the main action. Competitors preparing their equipment, spectators, mechanics etc. also provide interesting subjects and tell the story of the event.

After the shoot edit and edit again – you will have many pictures that don’t make the grade, be sure to discard these in favour of your favourites. You may find that you have very few that really make good sports pictures at first, but don’t be disheartened. Find out when the next event is happening and go back.

Shooting the same sport and location will really help build up your knowledge of where the best positions are for good pictures. This is hugely important to improving your sports photography.