First Images With Canon 5D Mark IV

This weekend I tested out my new Canon 5D Mark IV at a football game between SMU and Baylor in Waco, TX. I've owned a Canon 5D Mark III for several years now so there wasn't too much of an adjustment other than one new toggle switch on the back to change auto-focus settings. It was also fun playing with the new touch screen that allows you to tap to change settings, swipe through photos and pinch to zoom. Pretty cool stuff.

The new 30.4 MP sensor is awesome. For something like football it really allowed me to shoot action across the field and still be able to crop the photo down for a clean shot of the action that was pretty far away. With the new sensor is you really have to the focus properly on your subject. If you miss the focus it's really apparent and you might notice that in some of my photos. But when it hits it is really sharp even with the ancient 100-400L IS lens I was using. The focus was fast and it's just a matter of user error for missed shots.

Now I know the 5D4 isn't exactly made for sports photography but for me it's the perfect compromise. The only options for "sports photography" are the Canon 1DX Mark II (Just too expensive for me), the Canon 1DX (Too old for me -- I like Wifi and touch screen) and the Canon 7D Mark II (Not impressed with the sensor, dynamic range or ISO abilities). The 5D4 comes in right in the middle with a fair price of $3500, similar auto-focusing system to the Canon 1DX Mark II, great sensor and 7 frames per second, which is one more FPS than I was getting on the 5D3. It's an all-around shooter and everything I'm looking for. 

One thing to keep in mind when looking at these photos is most of them are heavily cropped and even at an images size of 2000px these are still pretty damn sharp. I could've used a better lens but I just don't have one right now. (p.s. a couple of these were shot with my old 5D3)

Dirk Nowitzki's Heroes Celebrity Baseball Game

Dirk Nowitzki's Heroes Celebrity Baseball Game is a pretty special annual charity event here in North Texas. Not only is it a great and hilarious sight to see players from the Dallas Mavericks, Dallas Cowboys and Dallas Stars play sloppy baseball but they raise a ton of money. The annual game has been around for a while but for the third year in a row that Dirk has had his name on the event it was a sellout event. Really glad I got the chance to shoot it for the Dallas Observer -- it's an event I've wanted to shoot for a few years now. My full gallery of photos can be found here.

I've shot a ton of football and basketball but I haven't really shot a ton of baseball -- or any at all. It's definitely one of the hardest sports to shoot. There's so many lulls in the game then sudden bursts of action that it's tough to stay focused the entire time. Not only that, but it's pretty damn hard to track a baseball from the tip of the bat to whoever fields it and back for a tag. It's definitely a skill that needs a ton of practice and more so than any sport a camera with a high frames-per-second count is a must. If not, you'll rarely catch a good shot of a swing or even an infielder making a throw to first at peak action. Hopefully I can find some more baseball to shoot. 

Shooting More and Missing Less

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As I mentioned in my last post, spring games are generally meaningless but for a young sports photographer like me I'll take every opportunity I can get to improve my shooting skills. And because I took the opportunity to shoot North Texas' spring game in Denton I had a huge revelation: I need to shoot more to miss less. 

It seems like a simple and obvious statement but "spraying and praying" isn't how I typically shoot. I'm usually much more calculated and waiting for "the moment." In football, and any other sport, the game just moves too fast and waiting for a moment means you'll usually miss it. That's how it was for me. So many of my sports photos are taken just after the moment I really wanted to shoot. I want the photo of the receiver fully extended in the air catching the football or I want the linebacker right when he's making initial contact with the ball carrier but I always release the shutter just a little too late because I was "waiting" for it. 

This issue has a little to do with the equipment I'm using. Typically I'm shooting with a Canon 5D mark III with a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L so I'm only getting about 6 frames per second compared to the 12 or 13 of the 1DX and my lens doesn't focus as fast as the 400mm f/2.8L. But this time as I saw the ball in the air or I saw the ball carrier getting close to colliding with a defender I shot much earlier than I normally do and let AI Servo do its work and it paid off pretty well. I ended with a few more peak action shots of receivers and defenders than usual but I still need to work on tracking the ball better as it makes its way through the air to a receiver. 

The goal is always to be better than I was last time and shooting this game really helped me. 

Mean Green fans got their first opportunity to see new head coach Seth Litrell's team in action

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Capturing A Knockout

One of my first assignments I ever had as a photographer was a photo essay on boxing. My photojournalism professor asked us to do a photo essay on someone we didn't know and it just happened to be at the same time the Texas Golden Gloves finals were taking place in Fort Worth. I'm still not sure how I had the guts to do this but I pulled into the parking lot as the athletes were registering for the event and I just walked up to the biggest boxer I saw. His name was Ladell Williams from Oak Cliff. Somehow Ladell and his coach trusted me and let me follow them around that weekend and I came away with some decent shots--nothing extraordinary. Photography was completely new to me at the time.

I really loved the experience. Boxing is different from sports like football and basketball. It's way more personal. In football there's 53-75 players on a team and it's just next to impossible to really focus in on one player or even care about one player. With boxing I was able to focus on Ladell and spend time with him as he prepared. Sadly, most of those images were lost when a hard drive crashed but I have a couple that I put on flickr. 

Since that time I've been looking for more opportunities to shoot some boxing but I just haven't had any luck until recently. One of Dallas' newest venues, The Bomb Factory, hosted a Premier Boxing Champions event that was nationally broadcasted on NBC of which I was able to get access. It wasn't the access I was hoping for but as a photographer usually has to do, I worked with what I had. It would’ve been great to be able to shoot ringside with my 16-35mm capturing wide angle shots of jarring punches but instead I was relegated to the balcony of the venue. To get as close to the action as I could I had to work with my 70-200mm. 

One of my favorite current photographers is Al Bello. He’s a sports photographer for Getty Images and his boxing photography is unrivaled. He consistently pumps out fantastic work from the major bouts featuring the likes of Mayweather, Pacquiao and Canelo. Well, after this event I have a whole new found respect for his amazing work. It was much more difficult than I thought to keep up with the fights and try to capture a flurry of punches, let alone a knockout punch. In one of the early fights I thought I was about to capture one—I saw it coming. One of the boxers attempted a wild right hook but he missed and while he was attempting to regather himself he was wide open and his opponent rocked him with a right hook of his own and knocked him out cold. I saw it coming but I couldn’t react fast enough and missed the knockout punch by at least two frames. I was pretty bummed out. 

Later I felt like I was getting better but it still took a few rounds of each fight for me to start to see patterns in the boxers’ styles and prepare for flurries, but it was still quite a task. It was a great challenge, though, and I definitely look forward to being able to shoot more fights because when you do a great shot from a boxing match it feels pretty damn rewarding.

Trying To Capture Newsworthy Photos Of FC Dallas

I'm no soccer expert and that was kind of a problem during Saturday's FC Dallas vs. Portland Timbers game. Shooting soccer is a whole different beast compared to football, well, american football. 

Going in to the game I knew I would be able to walk away with some decent action photos because that's just what happens when guys are running up and down the field for at least 90 minutes. The hard part is to capture photos that tell a story, e.g., capture that goal-scoring kick or the moment the goalie misses the ball. The problem is there's not much time to adjust to situations. In football, there's stoppage between plays even if it's just for 15 seconds but that's usually enough time to move into a new position if a team is moving in a certain direction. In soccer, it's completely unpredictable as to which side of the field the players will bring the ball up. And even if you're locked in on the player bringing the ball up there's a pretty high probability he's going to cross it to one of his teammates--that's the prediction you have to make as the photographer trying to capture newsworthy photo. 

During this game FC Dallas scored two goals in the first 22 minutes of the game and I just wasn't prepared for that. I happened to catch a photo of Michael Barrios kicking the goal but in the photo it's doesn't provide much visual context. I did however catch a photo of him celebrating with his teammates, which is the same and only photo the Dallas Morning News ran from the game. 

That first game was a good experience and lucky for me the team here is on a five-game win streak, so my editor is more than happy to keep sending me out to the games where I'll be able to get more practice and capture those newsworthy photos.