haha. now that i get your attention... what i am seeking is not far from the subject title. we recently went and shot 3 days of the 2008 US Adult National Championships and came back with hundreds of photos. by the end, we ran out of creativity (if we had any in the first place.. ). we were getting bored by our own photos. so i want to seek some feedback on the quality of our photos. are they good? bad? which one do you like, which one do you dislike? why? any suggestions for improvement? i hope the feedback can help us take better photos next time.. here are the links to our albums: day 1 day 2 day 3 day 2/3 part 2
I've quite enjoyed looking at each and every one of those photos Kwun. The photo selection from the "the rest," the cropping of each individual to zoom in an area of interest and discarding the extraneous etc, is not an easy process, time-wise, and not mechanical either. The "art" is surely from the vision of the artist (photographer) or graphical editor (often the photographer as well) and the end result is the superb gallery you've presented, and is, far and away, absolutely great compared to the various news outlets snapshot and post up that litter any "Pics" thread. I mean, how many ways can you photograph a backhand, smash? Eventually you'll have to portray something extra, be it cropping, subliminal player expression, whatever. As with photography, badminton, keep doing what you're doing right, and it gets better. It's scary to hear you're still looking for ways to take even better shots in the future, given the current quality. -dave
Names of players would be nice, on the photo, or below. I resorted to looking at names at the back of their shirt (Chandra, Malaythong for eg). -dave
Yeah, I agree. This very much depends on the local conditions. All England is very good because they darken the audience. If the audience is going wild, that can add greatly to a photo. I need a 200/f2.0....
Boring, not even a millisecond. Quality wise, unquestionable. Is there a camera that can take better quality photo than your MarkIII, I mean in this situation? I like all of them minus the ones that I don't like. Which ones I dislike(This is just my personal preference. Nothing to do with your photos.). I don't like photos that has some part/s of the main object being cut off from the photo. There are exceptions but very rare. All your photos are closeup of the player/s. Would be good if you can take some showing the full court or wider area. Below are two photos that I wish I can see more coverage area so that I know what causes the main object to be in such unusual position. Well unless you plan to tell the story in words. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmpsmash/2388544761/in/set-72157604389647358/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmpsmash/2388542867/in/set-72157604389647358/ Enough said from a person who has never owned or clicked on a camera for more than 10 years (I never consider mobile camera a real camera).
Hmm, what can kwun improve upon for his badminton pics??.. ..are you being serious, kwun??.. ..sorry, kwun, i just had a chance to finally skim through this yrs' U.S. Nationals' pics (haven't read all the posts in there, yet). But looking through them, they're all great pics! In terms of variety of angles, selection of capturing dramatic actions and expressions/emotions of players, IMO, you've covered them all. If there's one thing that's "missing", perhaps our Mike Yang could allow you to go up the roof and open a roof access. Allowing you to then be able to take that 'above the court' shots. ..i would somewhat feel the same. It seems like, there are more individual & close up shots. Yes, i like the full court coverage pics, maybe from the side of the court. Especially the one picture, which you took in last yr's China or HK Open; don't recall the link of that pic. The one where you captured the "frozen" shuttle, along with ZhangJieWen and XieZhongBo; I thought that picture looks cool & tells a lot about the action, capturing the "moment" Another thing that i didn't see a whole lot, from the set of pics, was the players & fans interactions pics. Maybe you took some but decided to not show them. Anyhoo, enough "nit-picking" kwun's wonderful pics. Now, let's go get them some more next month @ the $20,000 Bay Badminton Championships tourney. *Hope they'll allow you to go up the roof and take some pics from there..
Badminton photo: Showing how Badminton is played . Hi kwun, When I talk about a 'Badminton photo', the first thing that comes to my mind is; it should be a photo showing how Badminton is played, in terms of; (1) How a player holds a racket (grip and rackethead postion) (2) How a player holds a shuttlecock (ready position) (3) How a player hits the shuttlecock (stroke action) (4) How a player balances himself/herself (stance) (5) How a player moves/runs/jumps/flies (footwork) (6) How/where partners stand (doubles positions) etc, etc...... So if your photos can show any of the above Badminton actions, then those are the ones I like. Cheers... chris@ccc.
How tastes differ ... I was actually going to suggest more of these types of shots. By now everything suggested by chris@ccc has been done by now over and over and like Kwun feels over again . The angle on the 2nd pic is a bit (too) odd and the 1st looks like it was too late but the general idea I like . Especially more closeups of faces or just the arms & torso with a shuttle in sight (I guess that could fall into chriss@ccc's no.2 category, doubles serve or something but was thinking more of doubles defense here) ... some pics that show a little emotion would be nice as well emotion after scoring a big point or failing on a big point or an easy shot etc. Only seem to see action shots now ...
Fans of certain players would love to see any photo taken of their idols . Yes... I was talking about 'Badminton photos'. However, many fans of certain players would love to see any photo taken of their idols. .
I know how you feel kwun.. it is an art form and a skill.. i think all you can do is carry on snapping away... most of the pics wll be run of the mill.. but every so often you will get one that you personally are really chuffed with.. it's those pics that you do it for.. it's nice to get compliments from other people.. but the final say is with yourself, and we're always our own fiercest critics. carry on doing what your doing kwun.. but do it for yourself
thanks Dave. we have certainly came some ways from when we started to take serious badminton photos. however, we have gotten to the point where i think more thought is needed to move to the next level. yeah, that's the thing. we have experimented and tried many angles, shots, posture. but we have started to run out. there must be something we missed? i know that in many other photo discipline, good photographer can find the proper composition and angle, have the "eye" for good shots. that's what i want to understand. i don't want to stand still in one level, need to keep learning and improve our photos.
yeah. we try to find spots that has less cluttered background. but for that particular tournament, we might need to be hung down from the roof in order for that to happen. Cheung, 135/2... you know you want it.
thanks. yeah. that's a good feedback also. post-action shots are quite interesting. will keep that in mind. i think it is valuable to have feedback from non-photographer, although the feedback is usually different than photographer's feedback, they are also good feedback as the majority of the viewers are not photographers.
trust me. i asked. i have. but didn't turn out too well as the shuttle blended into the busy background. need to find a better angle for that next time. yeah, i am just doing my homework for the BBC next months. hopefully we will get some inspirations and produce even better photos.
thanks. but in a way, that's what we have been doing to learn. just shooting away and once in a while, a couple of good shots by luck. but i want to get out of this "luck" business. i want to make good shots more deliberately, we have been trying to plan out shots in our heads and try to achieve it. that works to a certain extent. in the end, we still have a lot of shots which were just results of trying to shoot what we see. just go out and shoot is a good suggestion, and that's what i suggest new comers. just go out and learn by doing as there are no simple formula. but at the same time, i believe it is time to move up to another level. and thus what prompted this thread.
hmmmm. i think if you try to set yourself up for shots tho and it never appears you could be more disappointed when you miss a shot somewhere else because you were focused on something else.. anything can happen, and will happen.. so you've got to follow the action.. so perhaps tuning your anticipation of where and when something exciting is going to happen is the key... however.. in my experience learning something like that is about practice and can't be pinned down to improving technique or skill..