Capturing peak action shots during sporting events requires good access and great timing. When covering youth sports, its usually important to capture action shots of several different players on the field. The chances of capturing action shots of a wide variety of players during a game are remote--especially with very young players.

One method I use to get action shots of more players is to take them during practice. If I'm provided with access to the field, I will take several images of players during the warm ups before the game and also between each inning. This photograph of a softball pitcher was taken while she was warming up between innings. I was positioned right next to the catcher for this image. I used a shutter speed of 1/1250th of a second to freeze the action and a very wide aperture (f/2) to isolate the pitcher by blurring the background. I had to boost my ISO setting to 1600 given the early evening lighting. I took care to shoot from a vantage point that would not include players standing in the background--which would have given information to the viewer that this was a practice pitch.

Softball pitcher When shooting youth sports, I almost always shoot from a low perspective. Generally, I shoot from both knees. This helps make the subject appear more imposing within the frame. It doesn't take long before my knees become sore while shooting from this position. I purchased an inexpensive pair of knee pads from Home Depot to make it more comfortable to sustain the stance.

Ultimately, I used three frames of a sequence to create the following image in Photoshop:

OYA girls' softball