My name is Ben Lowy, Benjamin Lowy is what my mom calls me when I didn't clean my room.
I am a photographer.
Right now, I'm here to talk about sports photography.
Photographing sports is very similar to being in war in the case that it's a visceral reaction,
It's to what's going on in front of you.
Where you're not having an impact on what you're photographing, you're just reacting to it, using kind of an innate skill set in terms of your response.
Like your compositional abilities without thinking about it.
It's not like being in a studio, taking portraits, it's about just reacting to what happens.
So while in war photography, it would be in a conflict zone of people fighting in front of me,
it's very similar to sports.
For me, shooting sports was a way to process and a way to creatively take all the lessons that I've learned about how to shoot and to shoot differently.
I mean to me, that's really important. It's to create different imagery than what's out there.
I don't want to do the same thing.
So the best advice I've ever gotten and that I follow to this day - and David Burnett, he's an amazing sports photographer in his own right -
gave me this advice when I first started in 2002, before I did anything else,
And he said when you see a cluster, he called it a 'flock of photographers ' always go someplace else.
And sometimes that really works out well and sometimes it doesn't.
So when I was doing the Olympics for the ski jump, everyone kind of stands on one place to photograph the ski jump,
and ski jump is one of the hardest things to photograph because it's an optical illusion.
As you know the jumper comes down, comes off, up, and then drifts down
and you're shooting it from the side, so it's very hard to tell how they're coming down.
And so I decided to go under the lip of the actual jump, but all you get is asses floating away from you in the night
and that didn't make a very good picture.
So kind of being and you know it's testing out these different spaces, but at the same time,
doing the aerial jumping, I actually saw David Burnett in a cluster of their photographers
and I said I'm gonna take this lesson and get away from him.
And I actually kind of had an ice pick and climbed up the side of the slope and photographed it
from a completely different angle that no one had.
And I made imagery that I loved and that was unique.
So as I'm climbing up and I have like four cameras on me, the ice is melting and I'm slipping
and then I start sweating and I'm like 'Oh, I sweat!' and there's ice on my camera
and I realized because I kept on slipping into the snow that I like wipe the -my - the sweat off my face
and then I wipe the camera off of the ice and I start shooting -
and there are these crazy lens flares on all my shots from there and I realized
it's because I have tons of head grease and sweat all over my lenses.
And this became like my calling card for so many years where I just apply nose grease to basically my lens filters
when I'm shooting any type of sports that has crazy LED lights.
I'm like do this and I like wipe it.
Horizontal wipe will give you vertical lens flares, a vertical wipe will give you horizontal lens flares.
I still don't understand why that is, but - and so that's been my thing.
So again, it's like figuring out like 'Oh, I want to use a star filter!' - Spray hairspray.
That was like totally in the 70s, but it's just another way to be creative with your imagery.
And to me, that's really important.
That's the key to photography is - I think to be successful, to have a legacy,
especially these days when everyone has a camera is you need to find a way to tell your story uniquely.
And that could be for any genre of photography.
It's like you have to find a way to stand out and for your imagery to have a legacy,
is to tell a story, but to do it in a different way that attracts attention.
It's really, really important to try and find different angles.
So that would be my first tip. It's like try and find a different angle.
Really think about how you can photograph sports in a unique way, in a way that you haven't seen it done before.
That's what's key.
Tip number two is: how do you know that? By studying other photography.
So you know what has been done and you know what hasn't been done.
And that - it's important just like you're gonna do anything in your life.
And whether it's cooking or going to the gym or you know photography,
you want to study what's come before you; so that you don't go in blindly.
And I think that helps.
But on another hand, going in blindly and not looking at a sport photography is a way for you-
for that environment to have an effect on you where you don't know what to expect.
It's a good tip for like if you understand who you are as a photographer: do you need to study what's come before,
so you can figure it out? Or are you, you know, able to be empathic enough when you walk into a space,
to just know what you personally are feeling and how you're gonna translate that with your camera.
And I think that is two different types of photographers and one will work for one person and one will work for another.
The thing with shooting sports and just like any other type of photography, for the most part, is its physical.
You're carrying the cameras and you have to be physically aware of what your limitations are,
how things are going to affect you and a lot of the fighting sports is you're kneeling,
and football, you're kneeling.
You know, if you're shooting with the longer lens and it sucks on your knees.
So, a lot of people wear rollerblade knee pads. I actually wear volleyball knee pads underneath my pants,
so that you don't end up hurting your knees as much.
Being able to carry your gear and being able to work with it fast enough is really key.
Having everything preset is also really important.
Having the right focusing mechanism for the sport that you're photographing.
For fighting stuff, I use some of the tracking autofocus features that are in the Sony cameras,
but for football, when people are running across the field and I'm on the sidelines sort of perpendicular,
I use a different expanded spot autofocus.
So, understanding what each type of autofocus capabilities are
because you have a lot of different options, really help with the sport that you're covering.
An important element when photographing like sort of 'the smaller sports' that are not as well-known,
so like I said, I've done fighting and wrestling all over the world,
especially in other countries where you know, it's not the UFC, it's not like these big events,
you want to get in.
Because like I said, you want to create unique imagery. So how did you get into these places
and be able to make those intimate storytelling images that haven't been seen?
So for me, and what I've learned is that I need to fight with the fighters and be in the gym with them first
before I even take, you know, and make imagery.
So, when I was in India doing kushti wrestling, I wrestled with all the wrestlers
because I was like "this American and we have such good protein in America",
they decided for, you know, me to fight this guy who had 60 pounds on me.
And spent the next nine minutes destroying me and throwing me around,
but once that happened and like two days later after I recovered from my thrashing,
they let me photograph whatever I want.
And that is super key.
Like I was allowed to go down into like the kind of temple grounds into the fighting pits
which is like a very specific type of sand.
To make an image that, you know, if I went in there and didn't fight and didn't hang out with them,
like I wouldn't have been able to make.
So you can't take that sort of tip to doing like football because you're not gonna go cover the Super Bowl
and be like 'Hey guys! Can I just like do a couple of downs with you?'
and then like be able to make better pictures because that's not really gonna work.
But when you're trying to do those sports features, it always helps to - and just like doing any kind of documentary -
it always helps to take part in something with your subjects in order for them to understand that you're there to be with them.
And I think that's key in any type of photography.
Guys! For more tips and tricks check out the Sony Alpha YouTube channel and AlphaUniverse.com
and let us know what you liked about this video in the comments below!