Photographing Friday Night Lights Football — Westlake Chaparrals vs Anderson Trojans

I am always thrilled to be given a photo sports assignment. Years ago, I photographed high school football using a Minolta 35 MM film camera using a small zoom lens from the sidelines. In those days of film, night photography was very difficult without a flash. Even using 50mm f/1.4 and using ASA 400 speed color film captured a bit blurry action photos. I’ve written this blog to share how I photograph football games—an aggressive contact sport with lots of action while chasing both teams to the end zones for 4 quarters of playing time, plus photographing the halftime entertainment of both schools. Whew!
Today’s modern professional DSLR cameras having low light capabilities, lower noise levels at high ISO, and fast lenses with wide apertures renders remarkably sharp images. But great equipment is not enough without the camera knowledge base, a keen eye, anticipations, and understanding the game.

My Camera Gear

I shoot with two Canon Cameras — 5Diii and 70D and both hang from a Black Rapid shoulder harness. On the 70D, I will attach a Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 telephoto lens. The advantage mounting this lens on the 70D is that this camera uses a smaller sensor than the full frame as implemented on the 5Diii, thus giving me the advantage of an equivalent 112 – 320mm at f/2.8. On my 5Diii, I’ll mount my Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 for situations where I am very close to players and don’t need the zoom factor. I wear a Think Tank belt having several lens pockets and small case for a flash, memory cards, extra camera batteries, and protein bars. I always shoot in Manual mode and in continuous focus mode using the camera back button rather than the shutter button half-press for focus.

First Shots Are Warm Ups

I try to arrive at least 90 minutes before kick-off. This gives me time to get parking, strap into my cameras, and check into the stadium. Usually both team players are on the field warming up and practicing plays, and this is a good time for me to set my 70D camera for ISO, starting off at about 500 @ f/2.8 and 1/1000 sec on my 70D using the 70-200mm lens. As daylight fades away, my ISO will jump up anywhere from 2000-3200 with the f/stop remaining the same but with a slower shutter speed to 1/500 sec. Interesting that lighting will vary between stadiums, with lighting brightest mid-field. I can compensate the image to balance lower lighting during post processing. All photos are shot in the RAW format instead of JPG. It is important I have 100% of the image data for optimum editing.. High school football stadiums are not as well lighted as college or pro stadiums for live television broadcasts. The photo above was taken with my 70D using the initial settings.

The Coin Toss

Team captains for both Westlake Chaps Football and Anderson Trojan Football teams at the 50 yard line for introductions and the toss of the coin. Trojans won the toss to receive.

The start of the football game is the introduction of team captains and head official. A photographer gets a good advantage point in capturing the toss. This photo was taken using my Canon 5Diii using a Tamron 24-70mm @ 1/250 sec. Officials have their on way of tossing the coin, some tossing it way high into the air and letting it fall to the ground, and some use a short coin flip, catching the coin on the hand palm and flipping it over to the  opposite hand.

Football Action

Westlake Chaps right back Izaiah Faz (7) gets help from his linemen to cross into the end zone for another Westlake touchdown.

When it comes to deciding where to take my position on the field for the first kick-off, I will typically first set at the 25 yard line on the receiving side. After the catch marking the first down, I’ll stay 10 or more yards behind the offensive team. If the team shows signs of rapid advancement, then I’ll move ahead of them by 15 to 20 yards. I pretty much watch the game play through my camera viewfinder using center spot focusing and tracking the ball carrier. I do random checks for image quality from the camera LCD. If necessary,  I’ll make adjustments to ISO and shutter speed while keeping the aperture at f/2.8 to allow the maximum amount of light for best exposure. My general rule of thumb for photographing football—stay 20 yards ahead of the offensive winning, and if the offensive team is losing by a wide margin, stay 20 yards behind them.

Chaps Noah Hodes, #16, successfully catches the pass from QB Sam Ehlinger and run out of bounds but sets up the next Chaps touchdown score.

At the scrimmage line, quarterback Sam Ehlinger gets his call signals from his offensive coach at the sideline.

When photographing football or action sports, one cannot fall asleep at the wheel as the plays comes in fast and furious. I watch for player positions and patterns, and slowly I begin to learn how to anticipate the offensive plays. As the late evening became night time, I changed the 70D ISO to 1250 and slowing my shutter speed to 1/320 to get a slight blur for action. Later, I upped the ISO to 2500 and the shutter to 1/400 sec.  Capturing the image as the ball is just to be caught is the most desired shots in football action. Sports editors love to have faces seen during the play. However large helmets with protective face guards and face masks make this difficult, There’s a bit of luck for this to happen.

Half Time Entertainment

My camera and I take no half time breathers. I am down on the field sidelines and set to capture the high stepping Westlake Hyline Drill Team perform music performed by the Westlake High School Band.

Capturing the winning moments

Westlake Chaps Beau Brubach, #1, made a long run into the end zone and dragged Wilson Brown, #46, with him for the touchdown

After Andrew Boykin, #19, carried the ball in for the Chaps touchdown, Adrew does a chest bump with Noah Hodes (16) in celebration.

Then capturing what the officials missed…

Anderson Trojan offensive guard Jack Gaines (77) gets his helmet pulled off by Westlake Chaps Thomas Talbert (93). Fortunately the mouth guard has a break-away tether. Interesting that the referees missed this and no foul was called on the play. No flag was thrown during this play.

The end of the game was won by Westlake Chaps smothering the Anderson Trojans 73 – 10. The Trojans just couldn’t hold back the Chaps offensive, and the Trojans was troubled in advancing the ball to first downs, plus suffering fumbles and pass interceptions. At the end of the game, I followed the Westlake players to the goal line, where coaches gave the team a “well done”  followed by a closing prayer.

Following a short game review, Kody Allen #50, leads the Westlake Chaps Football players and coaches in a prayer to God in thanksgiving for a safe game.

Post editing

After snapping some 1,600 photos, the task of picking the keepers is no easy task. Fortunately, software apps help to ease this burden by rating the photos into a “stars” system—5 stars being the best. I use 64 GB Lexar Professional 1000X cards in my cameras. They have very fast writing speeds necessary for sports photography and made for rugged use. I first download all files to my i7 workstation 4 TB hard drive, separate from the system solid state drive. Selected photos are then brought into Adobe Camera RAW for the first editing that includes cropping, color temperature adjustments, if required, enhancing color, sharpening and exposure brightness and contrast, then exporting out to JPG. Those that are keepers go into Photoshop for finalizing to JPG. Depending on my media assignment, photos are sent via FTP or Dropbox to different agencies. One final important step—to back up every photo, even the non-keepers as they could come in handy later.  Of course there are toss non-keepers like out of focus shots or nothing happened there shots. Sometimes an editor may ask me if I captured a specific shot. After the football season, I will archive them.  After I have created a double back-up, then I can reformat all memory cards for the next project.
From here, I’m ready for another sports action adventure.

Need a photographer? My contacts:

John Gutierrez Photography
john@johngutierrez.photography.
http://www.johngutierrez.photography