(All images copyright Michael Berkeley Photography - no reproduction without permission)
Cricket is the sport that I understand the best, having played a lot (although to no great standard) when I was younger. I am a member of the MCC and I watch cricket at Lord’s whenever I can – and I have travelled overseas to watch Test Matches in Australia and Sri Lanka.
This is relevant because the better you understand a sport, the easier it is to anticipate what is going to happen and to select the right moment to take a photograph. You will also know which images will make a player look good and which they might prefer you not to use.
(Nikon D500; 200-500mm at 500mm; f/5.6; 1/2500th sec; ISO 280)
In my blog on How to Photograph Football I commented that capturing good football images is both very easy and very difficult. This is even more the case with cricket.
You know where the bowler and batsman will be, so it is very easy to get good images of them. But when you have a good shot of the bowler in action, they will do exactly the same thing each ball, so there is not much point in re-taking the same image again.
Dale Steyn (Nikon D500; 200-500mm; f5.6; 1/2000th sec; ISO 320)
There is much more variety with the batsman (or batter). They may hit the ball to the boundary; or miss it; or be bowled. The best angle to capture a batsman is often considered to be from behind mid-off (look it up on Google if you are not a cricketer!). Because the players change ends after every over, the batsman alternates between facing you and having their back to you, so you will get a different angle on the play.
(Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 493mm; f/6.3; 1/100th sec; ISO 250)
As with other sports where the players wear helmets - particularly polo - it is often difficult to capture the batsman’s face because they will be looking down eat the ball and also a noonday sun will cast a strong shadow. The best images can therefore often be achieved at the end of the shot when the player is looking to see where the ball has gone and judging whether a run is on. While the ball will not be in the picture, it is much more important that the player is recognisable - see the picture of James Vince below.
(Nikon D500; 200-500mm; f5.6; 1/2500th sec; ISO 280)
When the batsman has hit the ball, however, it is much more difficult to work out where it is going to end up; to re-focus on that point; and to capture the action in a way that tells the story of what has happened. The ball can move very quickly, so this takes practice … For the image below, I had to anticipate where the ball was going to land and then to re-focus on the fielder who was about the catch the ball.
(Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 600mm; f/6.3; 1/1000th sec; ISO 5000)
The biggest challenge with cricket is to capture the right moment. The old adage goes that “If you see it, you’ve missed it”. The problem is that, for example, when somebody is bowled, it takes time for your eyes to tell your brain that the bails have come off; for your brain then to tell your hands; and for your hands to tell the camera. The moment has then passed.
The best way to guarantee that you capture somebody being bowled is to take a burst of 6-8 images – and to start before the ball reaches the batsman. Inevitably this means that you take a lot of shots but, with digital, you can. If nothing interesting happens, you can always delete the files while the bowler is heading back to their mark … The shot below, taken during the Hampshire Ladies v Middlesex Ladies match in June 2018 was the second of a burst of 7 shots of the final wicket to fall.
(Nikon D500; 200-500mm at 360mm; f5.6; 1/2000th sec; ISO 720)
As with many – if not all – team sports, there is a risk that one of the other players will get in the way just as you are about to take a photograph. One of the ways around this for cricket is to photograph from the back of a stand (if there is one), so that you are looking down on the action. In this way, the batsman or bowler can be isolated against the grass – one of my photographer colleagues describes this a capturing a ‘green and clean’ shot.
To my mind, however, images taken from this angle lose something of the atmosphere of the occasion. This is a matter of preference and generally I like to be down lower. I believe you get a better perspective on the players; it makes them look more ‘heroic’; you stand a better chance of seeing a batsman’s face under their helmet’s visor; and the crowd in the background brings the audience into play. The 2 images above and below show Ryan Stevenson at an almost identical stage of his bowling action, one taken from ground level and the other from the top of the stand. Which do you prefer?
I also feel that being lower down brings you closer into the action - it is less ‘sterile’ and it gives a better impression of actually being in the ground and part of the action. In the picture of Felix Organ being stumped by Ben Foakes in the image below, you can almost feel the emotions of the players.
(Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 600m; f/6.3; 1/1600th sec; ISO 200)
I covered the general principles relating to camera settings in my blog on Getting into Sport and Music Photography. For cricket, I will shoot with the lens wide open for a shallow depth of field (to blur the crowd and the advertisements around the ground), and the shutter speed will need to be at least 1/1000th of a second to freeze the ball, which you will want to do in almost every case.
I leave the ISO setting on automatic and will cap it to, say, 6400. This is not a problem on a nice, sunny day, but can cause issues if it is a game being played under floodlights. I will normally be using a long lens (previously a Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 lens, and now a sony 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3) which is not as fast as the top sports photographers will use (and can afford!), so the ISO levels soon ramp up when the light is dim. Even so, the results are normally usable (see below).
(Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 600mm; f/6.3; 1/1000th sec; ISO 6400)
As with all sports, it is tempting to concentrate just on the action itself and to miss the interesting stories that unfold between the main action. Against this background, it is always important to do your homework before a match to find out who is playing for the first time or who is reaching some sort of milestone, so that you can ensure that you get a good photograph of them. And during a game, if somebody might be about to get 5 wickets or score a century, this is a sign to be prepared to capture the celebratory shot. Both these cases, the player is likely to look towards the pavilion to acknowledge the applause, so it is a good idea to be near the pavilion at this time.
Zak Crawley celebrates his century (Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 600mm; f/6.3; 1/1600 sec; ISO 160)
Cricket photography epitomises for me the reasons why I enjoy photographing sport. It is a complex game, which ebbs and flows, with moments of high drama – and it’s completely unpredictable. As the ball moves so quickly, there is a huge amount of luck being in the right place at the right time. It requires a huge amount of patience and, f you miss the key shot for one reason or another, there is no point worrying about it – they won’t do it for you again – so you just have to move on and capture the next moment of excitement!
With thanks to Hampshire County Cricket Club and the Utilita Bowl in Southampton.
To see more images, view the Cricket Gallery.
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