A Little News

Volleyball is the toughest sport for me to shoot.  I am close to the action, the ball moves fast and I am frequently tied to flash.  That means I have many, many more misses than hits when shooting volleyball.  You may be the same boat as me and if you are I have some tips that may help you.

First, and this is the easiest, most fool proof method of shooting volleyball, get high and focus on the net.  A great deal of predictable action happens right around the net.  If you get on a balcony or the top of the bleachers behind one of the teams you will have a clear view of the action around the net.  This will give you a safe action photo that you can take back from any game you may cover.  The second benefit to the high behind position is it allows you to cover action on the floor on the half of the court nearest you.  For those of you who like to be predictable you can stop reading now.

If you want to be a little more adventurous, drop down to the floor and shoot from behind one of the judges.  You can sit on the floor and cover both halves of the court and you will have a low point of view which may, or may not, work for you but you will never know until you try.  This position allows you to shoot some of the dives and digs that happen near floor level.  This makes for some cool shots.  The problem is two fold.  The action is unpredictable and it moves very fast and you can have an awful lot of legs between you and the action.  Obviously it is not as dependable a shooting position but it can give you more cool action and facial expressions.

You can also try shooting on the baseline behind one of the teams.  You have the same trouble with bodies between you and much of the action but when you get a shot it will typically be pretty nice.  You can shoot net shots but what I like to do from this position is look for action on or near the floor on the opposite side of the net.  Alternatively, this is a good place to use a normal to wide lens for players chasing balls toward you.  This happens once in a while but not often enough to depend on it for you money shot.

Vary your lens choice and look for chances to shoot with your wide lens.  It will only give you a single frame or maybe two frames at most but it can be a nice break from shooting with long glass and it will yield an image your sports editors are not always seeing.  You can go really long and shoot as tight as you can on places where the action is predictable such as serves and blocks and spikes around the net.  Obviously, a 70-200 is your best friend.

Maybe you will be lucky some of the time and can shoot available light.  This has happened to me; once.  The photos with this post were done available light at ISO 1600 using my EOS 5D.  I would not have tried this with the D2H.  There would have been too much noise.  Most of the time you will be tied to some kind of strobe set up unless you are covering college or pro games.  I like to bounce my strobes off the ceiling when possible when I am shooting volleyball because of the quality of light.  Unfortunately, this is not possible in all high school gyms.  You just have to be flexible when positioning your lights and try and cover the highest percentage of the court possible with even lighting.  Having f stop fall off is not something that is easy to deal with in post production so pay attention to your lighting and work it until you have it pretty well nailed down.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.