Youth Soccer Team

Wow your a brave man. i dont mind taking on a rugby team but kids football ouch!

Ok first things first you are never going to get a show stopping photo at kids football but you can get a great photo. Lets look at what you can do to make it better.

shooting height - unfortunat;ey if you want to shoot kids you have to be at kid height. All these photos look down on the kids and that makes them look small, if you drop down to their height by sitting cross legged on the floor (make sure you got a waterproof blanket to sit on) you will instantly see an improvment, all of a sudden the kids will look like mean football players going for goal and not kids kicking a ball around.

Lens - Dont be frighten of cutting people out by zooming in, the action for a game is the person with the ball, so long lens and open up so everything is out of focus except what you want. If you are going to include things in the frame make sure they are needed and in that second you get think can i go tighter.

Practise - Yep practise, practise, practise is the only way of getting used to it all, get to know the sporta nd best place to capture from and then stay in that spot. That way you can capture it as it comes to you and not miss something as you go running around trying to take the shot. Remember they are the ones doing sport not you.

In my experience over the years, the biggest weakness in sports photography (done by those who don't specialize in it) is equipment.  Few photographers not making their living at sports photograhpy own 300f2.8, 400f2.8 or 500f4 lenses.  But, without long, expensive, optics it is truly difficult to get good tight, sharp, photos on a soccer, football, rugby or baseball field.  With shorter lenses, you just can't get close enough and with slower lenses, they don't focus fast enough or blur the distracting backgrounds that kids fields generally have.

When I used to teach a class called "How to take better photos of your family and children" I recommended that parents take these pictures before games (during warmups) or after.  Then you can go out on the field and shoot from shorter distances.  You account for the slower focus of less expensive lenses and shoot from the proper angle to minimize background issues.

Now to you images!  In sports, timing is everything . . . 1/10th second too early or too late and have a mundane image.  But, get that timing right on and you can have a winner.  In your first image, I would say that you are just a little early.  In the second and third you are pretty close to spot on. 

The first two images could be cropped closer, but the third is what you are looking for. 

Mike and Stew talked about camera height.  I would rather shoot down and eliminate bad backgrounds than get low and have parking lots and houses in the back.  This is another place where a long, fast, lens can help a lot.  It will allow you to get low and blur the background so that you don't have to worry about it. 

None of these images look very sharp.  It may just be a result of the size and quality that you chose for web display, I can't tell from here.

Ed