Blog — Michael Berkeley Photography

(All images copyright Michael Berkeley Photography - no reproduction without permission)

I have been one of the official photographers at Salisbury Football Club (The Whites) since October 2016 and I have now photographed over 100 matches for them. There are 2 other regular photographers: John Rose who takes photos for the local newspaper, the Salisbury Journal; and Roger Elliott who worked for the Journal for some 40 years as a photographer – and for over 20 years as Head Photographer. When John is unavailable, I step in and cover for the Journal.

Roberts 20200808 Salisbury v Moneyfields-09517.jpg — Sam Roberts (Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 600mm; f/6.3; 1/2500th sec; ISO 800)

Photographing football is very easy and very difficult. It is easy to get a stock shot of a player kicking the ball (see above), but it is much harder to take an image that tells a story. This is where Roger excels. He has spent his career telling stories in the newspaper through his photographs and he has that knack for capturing the right moment while still taking very few images - a discipline born out of using film for many years. Photographic ‘stories’ are what the club wants because we provide photographs to illustrate the Match Reports, as well as to adorn the front cover of the programme for the next home game.

In the photograph above – used in the Match Report – Jack Stanley has been sent off for a tackle on the opposition player who is writhing in agony on the ground. This is described as a ‘Gamechanger’ because Salisbury were then down to 10 men and therefore faced an uphill struggle – so the photo succeeds in ‘telling the story’ of that stage of the game. Needless to say, the opposition player jumped up and trotted off merrily after the red card had been raised by the referee!

That hurt! (Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 470mm - f/6.3; 1/1600th sec; ISO 250)

Part of ‘telling the story’ is capturing the emotion of the moment, whether it is the pain of a heavy challenge (above) or a missed goal (below). In the image below, the emotions range from despair (the striker); disbelief (his team mate); relief (the goalie); to wry amusement (the defender). The ball is set against the context of the goalpost, so - as well as having vitality - the image is a self-contained story.

(Sony A9II; 70-200mm at 129mm - f/3.2; 1/1600th sec; ISO 2000)

As with other sports where the play moves from end to end (e.g. cricket, rugby, polo, basketball etc), I position myself at the end of the pitch towards which the team I am photographing is playing. This means that I am more likely to capture the face of the players coming towards me and, all being well, will be in the right position when a goal is scored. Of course, there is a large amount of luck being in the right place at the right time and there is no knowing whether a goal scorer will celebrate on the side of the pitch where you are. You can be in the ideal place and the scorer comes towards you – as in the 2 images below – or can disappear off towards the other side of the pitch and you are left photographing the number on their back … Even so, I am sure that some of the players look to see where the photographers are before starting their celebration!

Dom Jefferies celebrates scoring (Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 200mm; f/5.6; 1/1000th sec; ISO 2500)

Harry Baker (bottom) celebrates scoring (Sony A9II; 70-200mm at 95mm; f/2.8; 1/1000th sec; ISO 1600)

These goal celebration images are ideal for the front cover of a match programme because they show the club being successful and set the mood for the game ahead.

I described my ‘typical’ camera settings in my blog on Getting into Sport and Music Photography. Setting these generic setting in context, Salisbury FC’s ground - the Raymond MacEnhill Stadium - is surrounded by advertising hoardings and these can be very distracting. I therefore start by setting the aperture ‘wide open’ in order to blur the background as best I can. I usually use a 70-200mm (f2.8) lens and/or a 200-600mm (f5.6-f/6.3) lens. Reducing the depth of field provides a degree of separation between the players and the background. Next I set the shutter speed depending on how bright the day is, but it will usually be faster than 1/1000th sec for football in order to freeze the action. The ISO is set to automatic, within limits (usually a high of 6400) – I will check from time to time to ensure that it is as near to 100 ISO as possible.

Toby Holmes through on goal (Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 200mm; f/6.3; 1/1250th sec; ISO 200)

I always shoot with the Drive Mode set to Continuous (High), because it is difficult to capture the decisive moment effectively with just a single shot (for reasons that I set out in greater detail in my blog on How to Photograph Cricket). Some purists might accuse me of ‘spraying and praying’, but the camera has the facility to do it and it doesn’t cost anything – except in time processing the photos – so, why not?!

The 2 images below were taken from a burst - with only a fraction of a second of each other. It never ceases to amaze me how much can change in such a short period of time, so the more frames per second your camera can take, the better.

(Sony A9II; 200-600mm at 200mm; f/6.3; 1/1250th sec; ISO 800)

Some sports, such as motorsports, lend themselves to panning and motion blur (see my blog on How to Photograph Speedway), but football isn’t really one of them. While there is a risk that freezing the action may make the photos look a little ‘static’ and lacking in emotion, it means that the drama and movement in the photographs need to be generated by the action itself - the body shapes, expressions, composition etc. The image below was taken in the pouring rain during a match at Dorchester - football photographers also need to be prepared to get cold and wet!

Harry Baker scores (Sony A9II; 70-200mm at 187mm; f/2.8; 1/1000; ISO 1250)

On the other hand, one of my favourite images came as a result of inadvertently setting the camera up incorrectly. Way back in April 2017, Salisbury were in contention for promotion at the end of the season and during the first of two play-offs it was ‘all square’ towards the very end of the match, when … Tommy Wright scored! There was a huge release of emotion from the home crowd. At this level of football, the photographers have the luxury of being able to move around to get the best shot (at higher levels, they are allocated a place which they have to maintain throughout the game) – so, when Tommy headed towards the corner flag brandishing his shirt, I was running alongside him trying to keep up and photographing in continuous mode.

Tommy Wright celebrates in April 2017 (Nikon D700; Nikkor 50mm f2.2; 1/250sec; f2.8; ISO 1250)

The resulting image is slightly blurred and is overexposed, but it captured the emotion of the moment and was used extensively by the club – and was described by my colleague, Roger, as “the defining image of the season”. Not bad for a blurred photo! But it shows that an image doesn’t have to be technically perfect and that capturing emotion is more important.

To see more images, view the Football Gallery.

If you have enjoyed this blog or if you have any questions/comments, please leave a message in the comments box below.

Welcome to my website.

In this blog, I am going to set out how I started doing what I do and provide some general principles for music and sport photography. In other blogs, I explain how I approach photographing different situations, such as new sports.

So, how did it all start? Although I have been a keen photographer all my life, I woke up one day in 2016 and reflected that I had spent 35 years sitting at a desk in an office. I wanted to do something different – something that I really enjoy doing. My hobbies are photography, music, sport and travelling, so the solution seemed obvious…

Since then, I have been contacting music venues and sports clubs to see if I can come and take photographs, which has led to me photographing some 25 different sports. I should like to say a big thank you to all the people who have been so welcoming and supportive – and, in particular, thank you to all the photographers I have met along the way. Without exception, they have been generous with their time and advice.

I have made my images available to the clubs and the sportsmen/musicians involved. As one of my photographer friends put it, “If nobody sees your pictures, you just end us as a sad man with a camera …”. So I post my photos on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Flicker and on my own website. Please follow me on social media!

There are big similarities between photographing music and sport. Both involve capturing moving objects; in both cases, the lighting is likely to be completely outside your control; and both are totally – and thrillingly – unpredictable.

Both can also be very varied. For example, they can both be indoors or outdoors; and the conditions can range from extreme heat (in a packed music venue) to extreme cold (sitting near the corner flag at a football match in darkest February…).

The fun is adapting to the conditions, often in a situation and/or location that you have never experienced before, and using your experience to catch the ‘decisive moment’, isolate the point of interest and deliver images that reflect the drama of the occasion.

Although every situation will be different, it is possible to provide some general principles for camera settings:

· Exposure Mode – I always use Manual.

· Aperture – normally this will be set to the widest possible (say f1.8 or f2.8), in order to make the Depth of Field as shallow as possible. This is so that the point of interest is isolated by blurring the background.

· Shutter Speed – this will depend on what you are photographing but the principle is to set it to a speed fast enough to freeze the action (unless you want motion blur of course!). For ice hockey or cricket, where the puck/ball moves very quickly, this is likely to be at least 1/1000th sec. In a gloomy music venue, you will need 1/160th sec - or 1/125th sec - to coax as much light into the lens as possible.

· ISO – I normally set my ISO to ‘auto’, normally capped to about 6400, which I know will be manageable. In a dark music venue, I might let it go even higher than this and try to recover detail in post-production.

· Metering – again this varies, but I will often use spot metering to ensure that the point of interest is exposed correctly (particularly with music, where it is really important that the musician’s face is correctly exposed).

· Autofocus Mode – I use a tracking mode. When I used to have Nikon cameras, this meant AF-C 3D-tracking on the D500; with my new Sony A9II, it’s Tracking: Expand Flexible Spot (that would be AI-Servo on Canon). Once ‘locked on’, the camera will track the subject automatically. This allows you to concentrate on composition, safe in the knowledge that the camera is keeping the point of interest in focus.

· Drive Mode – I will normally have this on Continuous (Hi or Lo, depending on the subject), even for music because the lighting is changing all the time and singers often have their eyes closed, so you need to capture the split second that can make all the difference.

· RAW or JPEG? For the Jared Polin/ FroKnowsPhoto fans, “I Shoot RAW”! Actually, I don’t always … I do always shoot RAW for music because the lighting conditions are often extremely challenging, and you will need all the data you can get if you need to recover images in post-production. But, on a clear day at, say, a cricket match where I will be taking upwards of 2000 images during the day and processing the images then and there in order to upload them for the media, sometimes I do shoot JPEG … Sorry Jared.

Clearly these are general principles and I will break most of the rules almost all the time. But I hope that the above provides a starting point from which to depart.