Week 24: Sports-Swimming

Photos of the Week

Week 24 Assignment: Sports Photography-Swimming

This was another week of sports, with swimming being the focus this time. I have always wanted to shoot swimming, partly because I enjoy swimming myself, but also because I knew it would be challenging. The challenging part of shooting swimming begins with the lighting, because almost any indoor pool I have been to has the worst lighting. It is a mix of low light, making it difficult to get the fast shutter speeds to freeze action shots, and also different light temperatures, from florescent to tungsten to maybe a little natural light which can make it very difficult to get the colors to come out correct. I did my best to increase the ISO to get a decently high shutter speed without creating too much noise, and also adjusting the color balance to get a natural looking color. Due to the sporadic light being brighter in some areas of the pool and darker in others, I still ended up doing quite a bit of post production adjustments to get the photos to look natural.

It turned out to be the challenge I expected, but I am pretty happy with the shots I was able to capture. I was able to get some shots of each type of swim stroke, from freestyle and backstroke to breast stroke and butterfly. Some were more difficult to get shots of, but the butterfly was probably my favorite. Swimming was a great experience and I hope to do it again.

Coming Next:

Week 25 Assignment: Looks Like..