Swimming Photography
Well another season of High School Swimming has started. It is so much fun to shoot swimming; especially when you get some magical shots showing the intensity of the swimmers as they go for their best time.
This is a difficult shooting situation and I have to use ISO 3200 at 1/200th @ f2.8 for most shots. The lighting is so bad and enormously uneven. There are areas of the pool that 1/200th is too slow and others were it is too fast! But this speed gives me the most options as it is impossible to switch during an actual event.
I try to go from lane to lane, but of course this requires sure footing! No one should be surprised at how wet it is around the pool!
If your interested in this type of sports photography, one big tip would be to keep your camera at room temperature before entering the pool area as the difference in temperatures will be extreme. That and the humidity will fog up your lenses for a long time. I hustle between the car and the pool so I’m not out in the cold for too long.
Another pointer would be to practice your panning techniques and watch the swimmers tendencies as they will not always turn their heads towards you. This is not an easy sport to shoot; not only due to the lighting, but due to the speed of the events, the difficulty of getting good focus (due the swimmers heads going in and out of the water and obstructions getting in the way such as the splashing water).
I don’t use lights or my flash during these events primarily due to the fact that I believe it will be distracting to the swimmers, but I don’t see how it can help. The pool that I shoot at is the County College of Morris, which has extremely high ceilings, so there is no bouncing of the flash. In a sequence there are only a couple of good opportunities for action shoots, so if you plan on using high speed (10fps), then the flash will not keep up. I tend to like the lighting as is; though as I explained before, the lighting is very uneven.
I hope you get an opportunity to shoot swimming, it is a lot of fun and you can get some great images! Here is a link to my gallery where you can browse the images from this year.
http://www.siegel-photography.smugmug.com/Mt.%20Olive%20HS%20Swim%202008_2009
Ed Siegel
