Soccer Season
Merlo Field sits amongst the evergreens on the picturesque campus of the University of Portland. Many soccer greats have played here, including Megan Rapinoe and Christine Sinclair.
I live one mile from the University of Portland, a lovely private university with a stunning campus, friendly students and Merlo Field. While other schools across the country fill stadiums with city-sized crowds for football games, The U.P. very quietly hosts thrilling soccer matches at Merlo Field where their legendary soccer programs have been generating international stars in relative obscurity for decades. Instead of thousands of screaming fans, Merlo usually sees crowds of fewer than 1,000 but you wouldn’t know it by the intensity of the play on the field.
Last weekend I shot both the men’s and women’s teams in matches at Merlo. As a long-time fan I’ve been eager to get down to field level with my camera and capture the incredibly athleticism of the young players. After a few brief emails with the communications director at the University I picked up my press pass and climbed over the short wall surrounding the pitch and settled in for the action. If you think it’s impossible to get field-level access to high-level sporting events, you may want to just try asking. It never hurts to ask.
Below are some of my favorite shots from the two matches, and for each image I’ve included information in the caption about my camera settings, strategies and experience making it. Enjoy!
Nick Fernandez is a team leader for the Pilots, and his footwork is nothing short of dazzling. Shooting sports at field level, or as low to the ground as you can get, will allow you to capture action shots with more impact and intimacy. For this image, I used my Sony A7RV camera and the Sony 300mm F/2.8 GM lens. In the fading light of evening I kept my lens wide open at F/2.8 and my shutter speed cranked to 1/2000”, adjusting ISO to get a good exposure. At the start of the match the sun was still up and I was able to use ISO 400 and push my shutter speed to 1/4000”. By match end, well after sunset, I was down to 1/1600” and ISO was an astronomical 20,000.
Autofocus is incredible with modern digital cameras. Using subject tracking continuous autofocusing, I was able to maintain tack-sharp focus on subjects that moved at incredible speed in all directions. Even with the Sony A7RV’s amazing autofocus, I ended up tossing about 15% of my images due to soft focus. I shot all of my soccer images with an aperture of F/2.8 to allow in as much light as possible (and therefore achieve high shutter speeds), but I also wanted to blur the backgrounds of the shots as much as possible. Wide-open apertures produce very narrow fields of focus. Look at the grass at the players’ feet. The depth of field in this shot is less than 24 inches, making accurate autofocus a must.
Peak action is the name of the game in sports photography and even with a camera that can shoot 12 frames per second, I missed moments more often than I caught them. In this case, I would have preferred to have the ball in contact with the players as they fight for the header. This image, even though I like it, lacks the intensity of the peak moment of contact. I like the expressions on the players’ faces, but I have no idea which of them actually headed the ball. Most cameras have times when the view through the camera is blacked up due to the mechanics of the shutter closing. In the days of mirrored cameras this blackout was caused by the mirror flipping up to get out of the way of the light passing through to the film or sensor. Newer high-end cameras designed for action photography have eliminated blackout, allowing the photographer to better follow the action. Those cameras also feature insanely-fast frame rates of up to 120 frames per second, which would have given me the moment I was hoping for here. Oh well. You do the best you can with the gear you have.
To be honest, sports photography is frantic and there isn’t a lot of time for creating artistic images. You are mostly consumed with the tasks of tracking action through a telephoto lens with a very narrow field of view, firing the shutter at moments of peak action, and dancing with the autofocus buttons to track players. Even when task saturated, I get lucky and this shot of Micaah Garnett’s drive away from me is one of my favorites from the night. I think great sports photographers have to hold a deep reverence and appreciation of the games they cover. For me, soccer is a sport of profound grace and power with violent physicality and explosions of effort. The players who lace up cleats and head out to slam into each other at full speed while clobbering a ball are inspiring to me. In this case, Micaah’s powerful legs and aggressive stance embody the elegance of the sport.
Way back in my years as a newspaper photographer I covered a lot of sports, and I learned how to find the best spots to get the best angles on the action. In soccer and other sports where there’s a goal or basket, you need to anticipate that some of the best moments will happen there and position yourself to grab those opportunities. In soccer, if you sit on the ground at the ends of the pitch you can get great shots of the players moving up and down the field toward and away from you and those shots are emotive as they show the player’s faces. The downside is you position close to the goal and a little behind it. My strategy for soccer is to shoot the first half from the end of the pitch where the team you are shooting is driving to score. At halftime, I then switch to a midfield position where I can get images like this of the players in conflict in front of the goal. There are some challenges to this strategy. One is the referees, who I have a knack of sneaking into your shots. Their job is to get the best view of the action, so they are naturally going to work into your line of fire if you are in a good spot to catch that action.
The competition between players in soccer is like a rough dance. They are often tangled up and that makes for some interesting compositions, but I really enjoy shots like this where the tension is anticipated. I tend to favor shots where the players are in the air, feet off the ground and bodies twisted to send the ball down field. Seldom do I find images where players are flat-footed very compelling. Perhaps it’s a style choice for me, but moments like this one feel like soccer to me.
Shifting gears from the men’s game to the women’s, it’s worth mentioning that soccer fans are great photo subjects. Here in Portland our professional teams, the Timbers and Thorns, have massive groups of dedicated fans collectively called the “Army”. They dress up in wild costumes, paint their faces, and wave their scarves in the air to numerous songs they all know by heart. The University of Portland Pilots have an army as well, albeit a much smaller one. This ragtag gang of six or seven students bring flags, drums, kilts, scarves and purple smoke bombs to all of the Merlo games. This fine-looking chap is the General of the tiny army and he is worth a photo. It’s important to recognize that the action around the field is part of the sport of soccer and even in sparsely-attended matches there are people in the stands who are pouring out as much emotion and expression as the players. Obviously, such intimate environmental portraits aren't suited for super telephoto lenses. In this shot, I used my Sony 14mm F/1.8 GM lens. The super-wide perspective of the 14mm is great for pulling in a lot of information, but you need to be very careful with people close to the camera as they can become quite distorted. Aside from that concern, I love the 14mm for the opportunity to get very close and engage with a subject like this super fan.
Women's soccer has all of the incredible athleticism and speed of men's, but I find it to also brings an intensity that the men can't match. At the collegiate level the women seem to play with a level of passion and commitment I don't see anywhere else. When you sit down at field level during a match you are very very close to the action and you see the collisions and impacts at their full effect, but it's the sounds that really pack a punch. In this shot, Brooke Miller brings the ball under control as defenders converge. By positioning myself at the end of the field near the visiting team's goal I was able to get head-on shots like this. When you can see an athlete's face, more of the story can be told. The concentration and effort of high-level sports is usually shown best by the faces. With women's sports you also get the added bonus of flying hair, which I think can help testify to the intensity of the moment.
Let's talk about light. It's at the core of what we do as photographers and evening games under stadium lights are painful lighting-wise. Merlo Field has pretty good lights, certainly much better than the small-town high school football fields I visited back in the day, but artificial light is nothing like daylight. Even the brightest field lights have issues of color casts and shadows are often harsh. Dimmer lights add the challenge of getting enough illumination to achieve the action-freezing shutter speeds we need. Modern cameras like my Sony A7RV have really impressive high ISO capabilities, but the real advances in this area have come on the processing side with mind-boggling denoise software. This shot was taken in one of Merlo Field's darker areas and to maintain my desired shutter speed of 1/1,600" I had the ISO pushed to 16,000 and I should have taken it higher. In my newspaper days shooting film the very highest I dared push ISO was 6400, so to be able to go to 16,000 or even higher is incredible. Having a telephoto lens that can gather light at F/2.8 is also a massive advantage. Due to the limits of physics and optics, many telephoto lenses that are affordable are quite dark at their widest-open aperture. If you have a 300mm lens that only opens to F/4, it is letting in half as much light as the same focal length at F2.8. If you have a lens that can only open to F/5.6 (a very common floor for many tele's), that's only 25% of the light that the F/2.8 enjoys. All that is to say that I am very grateful to have a F/2.8 lens and a camera that can deliver good images at high ISO settings.
Sports is all about emotion for me. I love athletes that exhibit all of the extreme joy, frustration and sorrow that winning and losing bring. In this shot, Katana Norman celebrates her goal with her teammates. These reaction shots are powerful and should not be ignored. Many photographers are so locked into the mindset that the peak action is the primary goal, and they stop shooting when a player scores. The celebration that follows (and conversely, the deflation that the opposing team experiences) is great subject matter for still photography. Soccer players are quite good about their celebrations, often gathering together to hug. I love it. Don't get me wrong... I also love to capture the action of the score. I didn't catch Katana's goal prior to this image for a couple of frustrating reasons. One was my position on the field very near the goal. At the moment she came in to head the ball into the goal, another photographer jumped out to get a better angle. You can see him in the lower right corner of this image. This is a reality in many games and I am always conscious of obstructing fans or other photographers. This guy didn't seem to care that he blocked by view, and I hope his shots are all blurry.
Bre Norris is the Pilot's goalkeeper and undisputed team leader. She's a senior this year and has enjoyed a wonderful career as a collegiate athlete. I deliberately positioned myself at midfield for the second half of the match to ensure that I'd have some shots of Bre. She's so expressive and unlike a lot of goalkeepers, she's not super tall so she is usually fully extended to block shots, which makes for great shots. I think getting to know the players you are photographing is really helpful. Just like knowing the typical behavior of wildlife you are photographing, spending some time studying the habits and unique characteristics of athletes will give you insight into what they are going to do in front of your camera. Knowing that Bre is fearless and prone to spectacular saves helped me anticipate these moments.
Anyone who tells you that female athletes aren't as strong as their male counterparts is nuts. Take Cally Togiai and her powerful legs. The investments these amazing athletes make in their training pays off on the field as they put in miles of running, often at a full sprint, along with powerful kicks and soaring leaps for 90 minutes of intense play. Human anatomy is fascinating, and I think appreciating it in sports photography is important. Depending on the moments we freeze with our cameras, an athlete can look ripped and stunning or flabby and ungraceful. A respectful photographer can and should seek out shots that convey the power and elegance these astounding humans display.
Another Bre Norris moment here. The tighter you can frame peak action shots, the better. That's where the resolution of your camera plays an important role. My Sony A7RV isn't the best sports camera with its max frame rate of 12 frames per second, but it's full-frame resolution of 60 megapixels makes cropping like this possible. The original shot is a horizontal composition just like the other shot of Bre above. By cropping in tight to the action, I can eliminate distractions and highlight the action. The final image here is still 26 megapixels, which is great. Even with a 300mm lens, I often reply on cropping to get the compositions I want. My camera has a setting that I sometimes use that crops the image at capture, saving me the trouble later. Either approach works great, as long as you have the pixels to play with.
Last shot. Thanks for reading this far! Sports photography is a wonderful test of your skills with a camera. The fast pace, emotion and technical challenges of sports will test your mettle. If you want to give it a try, begin with a sport you care about so you'll have the appreciation and understanding needed to anticipate the peak moments. Try to get to the same level as the athletes and as close as safely possible. Shoot with wide-open apertures to isolate focus on the subjects and de-emphasize the background. Crank up your shutter speed and select continuous shooting so you can capture bursts of frames . Dial in your autofocus settings to track the action and shoot away. You will capture some great frames and a whole lot of bad ones. Delete the bad ones and celebrate the victories. Enjoy the excitement, drama and visual intensity of competition but be respectful of your subjects and those around you.
If you like my work, perhaps you’d like to attend one of my classes?
My Sony A7RV and Sony 300mm F/2.8 GM lens during a break in the action. For decades I've dreamed of having a 300mm F/2.8 and when Sony released this new version I started saving my pennies.