Taking Photos at the 21st Olympic Winter Games

There is an art to taking to good pictures at any event. Whether you are photographing a wedding, your kids birthday party or the Winter Olympics, you need to be prepared in order to get great shots. If you will be lucky enough to be going to the Winter Olympics, I would like to offer some tips that may help you get some good shots.

As I mentioned, these techniques will help you take great photos anytime you are photographing an event. Lets start some one of the basics.

1. Whether you are sitting in the bleachers at the 21^st Winter Olympics in Vancouver, or just taking photos of the kids at the local soccer or football game, some things will be obvious. To get good shots, you need to be close to the action, and that usually means you will need a long telephoto lens on the camera. The professionals at the 21^st Winter Olympics will have the luxury of having several cameras with long prime telephoto lenses. But for the average person, you may want to consider using a telephoto zoom lens, the longest one you can afford. These are much more affordable than large prime lenses.

2. The second thing to consider is resolution. You will need to ensure that you take photos on your camera, at the highest resolution available on you particular camera. By combining the longest lens you have, together with the highest resolution setting, you will have the best chance of taking photos that can be enlarged and show the action on the field.

3. Thirdly of course, you will need to have some large memory cards to store the images. Make sure that you use the maximum size that your camera can use. Some digital cameras are limited as to the size of the memory card and the speed designation. For example, some cameras cannot accept the high performance SD memory cards, called SDHC. If you are at the 21^st Winter Olympics you sure do want to put a memory card into the camera, and suddenly not be able to take photos.

4. Fourth, you need to anticipate the action. You need to be aware that although we humans have pretty good reflexes, when it comes time to take a photo at the peak of the action, you need to be prepared to take the shot, just before the action peaks, so as to allow for the time it takes to press the shutter and for the camera to take the shot. In the blog, I have a good example of anticipating the action.

One of the keys to anticipation is to follow the action with one eye looking through the camera, and the other eye looking at the action. Whether you are photographing a wedding or a Winter Olympic event, you keep one eye open and follow the action with the open eye, while looking through the camera with the other eye, making sure that the action is framed in the viewfinder, so you can press the shutter release at any time and get the shot.

This might sound obvious for a downhill ski run at the Winter Olympics, but you may be wondering how it applies at a wedding. Just imagine the bride is about to toss the bouquet into the eager hands of the single girls attending the wedding. You want to get a shot where the bouquet is still in the air, but just about to be caught by one or more of the girls. So, you have one eye looking through the camera, and the other eye follows the path of the bouquet from the bride to the girls. Just before it hits the girls, you take the shot and you should end up with a shot of the bouquet just landing on one or more of the girls hands, with the hands still outstretched reaching for the bouquet.

In fact, if you interested in photography, taking photos can be a very lucrative part time of full time career. In the United States, wedding photography accounts for more than $5 Billion per year. With some know how and a decent digital camera, you can be a part of this industry and can be making some extra income pretty quickly. Wedding photography is often how many top professionals began their careers, either for friends or learning in a wedding photography studio.

In these troubled economic times, photography can help make some extra money, whether you take photos at a wedding, portraits and family photos or some work for a company, taking photos for a flyer or brochure.

If you are interested in becoming a wedding photographer but are not sure where to start, please check out my course at this link for details. I have developed a course which includes all you will need to know PLUS pre-formatted forms ready for you to create your own business. The forms include price lists, photo shot list, contracts and much much more. Check it out here.