Sports (write up)

For the topic of "sport", we had to use different lenses. As i've never played around with many different types of lenses, and though I'm not majorly interested in sport itself, I was quite excited to shoot something involved with sport! 
The planning aspect of the topic created problems for many of us. Due to the risk assessment forms, etc. It was actually difficult to take photographs of people in the campus sports area. It's opened my eyes to the amount of planning involved in such a shoot, having to ask every individual's permission to take a photograph. This reminded me of writing my ethic of photo-journalism essay. I find it unsettling that a journalist can take a photograph of a celebrity who may not be in the right frame of mind, or in a compromising situation that could see them in to trouble. Yet it's challenging to take a couple of photos of a fellow student running a few metres on a university sports track. 
The idea for the shoot was to play pool. Compared to my other topics, I suppose this is my most basic and simple idea. I wanted to keep it low key so i could concentrate on the action and what was going on around me. The risks involved with the topic were minimal, though using expensive lenses close up to the action raises the risk of damage towards the camera. My favoured setting as you can perhaps tell from reading my blog is a small aperture setting, as it emphasizes the object in present. On the majority of photos, I kept the aperture at roughly f4 - f5.3 with the occasional f3.5 for the close ups of the pool balls. With the shutter speed, I varied the speed to try and capture different images. EG. on one of the photos, the ball has been hit and is moving at some speed. I slowed the speed to 1/30 to create a blurred action shot. I tried not to use flash whilst we were playing as I didn't want to bleach any of the images out, however there are a couple of photos with a small shadow reflecting the flash. The ISO on the photos used without the in-built flash are quite high (around 1000) due to the room being quite dark and not having a tripod with me caused issues. I played around with the white balance too, which usually I don't touch. However, I gained a cold effect on a couple of photos whilst changing the white balance to a high incandescent; I really liked the cool, harsh effect it gives. The lens in which I took out from uni was a wide angle lens, which I'd never used before until today. I was quite excited to use it, but whilst I was taking photos the result I found wasn't a profound difference. Next time I think I'll take out a wider angle lens. I tried to capture photos of the room itself with the pool table, as you could tell you were using a wide angle lens. It gave the effect of a fisheye, that the room is being wider, yet pushed together.
I'd perhaps say that out of all of the briefs we were given for intro to photography, sports has been my least favourable. I'd like to try again in my own time a different sport, perhaps with a little more action. In my opinion, rather than "sports" being tied with lenses, I would have preffered it to have been with shutter speed, and perhaps "tropical world" to have been set with lenses. I think I would have gained a lot more knowledge and practise.