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The thing Marc Aspland likes most about sports photography is that he has absolutely no control over the events unfolding in front of him. "I cannot ask Jonny Wilkinson to re-drop that goal for England in the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final because someone ran in front of my lens," says the Canon Ambassador. "That's part of the challenge of doing this work."
Marc has been rising to that challenge for the past 30 years as a sports photographer. He has been the Chief Sports Photographer at The Times newspaper in the UK since 1993. During that time he has photographed major sporting events around the world, including six summer Olympic Games and four FIFA World Cup Finals. He has won the Sports Photographer of the Year award four times.
Regularly shooting everything from football, tennis and swimming to horse racing, Marc also likes photographing sports that push him out of his comfort zone. For example, winter sports such as speed skating, curling and snowboarding challenge him to think afresh about what he does and how he wants to capture it. However, his enthusiasm for sports photography hasn't been fuelled just by the unpredictability of what he's photographing or capturing the moments that hit the headlines.
Here, Marc looks back at his work and offers the top techniques and approaches that have helped improve his sports photography the most.
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"My editor absolutely expects me to take a shot of the winning goal at a match, that's a given," Marc says. "But more than that, he wants me to take a picture that sums up an entire sports event in a unique way.
"It might be something completely different from the winning goal. It's about the way I interpret, say, the whole 90 minutes of a football match. It could be a sideways or quirky view, like a smile or a look on a player's face that sums up the match. My job is to sum up the 1,000 words written about the same event by a sports journalist. And that's on a daily basis. Doing that, I suppose, really comes back to that photojournalistic ability to see things a bit differently."
Part of being able to see things differently involves Marc using innovative techniques or unusual viewpoints to capture the image that's in his mind's eye. But ultimately it comes down to his whole approach to his work. "You try different techniques as you go along, but they all go hand in hand with experience and your evolution as a photographer," he says. "It's all about reacting to the story that's happening around you and being creative."
One way Marc has given his images an eye-catching look is to use either ultra-slow or ultra-fast shutter speeds. A very fast shutter speed, such as 1/4000 sec, will freeze everything and show things the human eye can't see: the wall of water sprayed up by a water-skier, or a cloud of dust kicked up by a tennis player on a clay court. Alternatively, a very slow shutter speed such as 1/15 sec can make the same action shot an abstract blur of colour and movement.
"If a horse is whizzing over the last fence in a major race, there could be 20 photographers lined up and taking exactly the same picture," Marc says. "But there might only be one taking their picture at 1/15 sec and panning with the action. I'll prefer those pictures all day long, because they're different and show that the photographer has seen a picture before the horses have even got out of the starting gate."
Marc has captured his own perspective on sporting events by varying his kit according to the story he wants to tell. Sometimes he uses a long telephoto lens such as the Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM. This lens, with its built-in 1.4x extender, reaches a focal length of 560mm. Long lenses like this have enabled Marc to close in on key details that other photographers often don't see.
"Things are going on all around me and I'm looking at a small part of the scene through the narrow tunnel of a telephoto lens," Marc says. "I might be focusing on the tattoos of a football player who's had a great game, his undone bootlaces or the face of someone in the crowd. Other photographers next to me can hear my camera clicking away and they wonder what I'm seeing. But it's already gone by then.
"Alternatively, I aim to capture the wider picture, even if the main player in a football match is just a small part of the frame. For example, I might use a Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM for shooting a wide view of Centre Court at Wimbledon or the whole of Wembley Stadium when the winning team is clapping the fans after a match."
Sports photographer Tom Jenkins talks about his World Press Photo-winning image, taken at the Grand National.
Another way that Marc has created images that give a unique slant on an event is to use a remote camera in an unusual location. This can mean anything from positioning a camera behind a goal with a Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM lens to placing the camera with a telephoto lens directly above a swimmer about to dive into a pool to start a race.
"I tend to use remote cameras more and more now," says Marc. "One recent example is the time I photographed the first and second Cambridge crews training for the Boat Race on the River Ouse in Cambridgeshire. I wanted to get both crews in the frame, but I also knew from a certain viewpoint I could include Ely Cathedral, which is a stunning building.
"So I put my Canon EOS-1D X Mark II on an enormous monopod which I held while sitting in a boat following the crews. I waited for the right moment, pointed the lens downwards and used my remote trigger just as Ely Cathedral came on the horizon. It was all about seeing that picture in my mind's eye, then working out how I could make it happen with the equipment I had with me."
Striking sports images can be made by shooting a rapid burst of exposures, such as the 14fps possible on Marc's Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, and combining them into one image in post-processing. It's not a technique Marc has used often because it becomes over-familiar, but it can create unique images that record multiple moments in time in just one frame.
Marc recalls: "I recently photographed the former Olympic sprinter Darren Campbell, who was recovering from a bleed on the brain, at Celtic Manor golf course in Wales. I wanted to sum up his life story in one picture – he had started as a kid from a rough area of Manchester – and had an idea for doing that.
"We went onto the 12th green on the course and I lay down on the grass. I asked him to do the starting blocks position and then run through my frame. I shot a multiple exposure and we put one picture over another in post-production. Again, in this situation I had to put on my photojournalist's head and think, 'what way can I best sum up this story?'"
As well as having a range of techniques in your armoury, Marc says he's learned the importance of taking your time to put those techniques into action. Photographers' lives are made easier by the technical sophistication of the latest generation of digital cameras, which allows greater opportunity for creativity, but Marc believes you have to allow yourself the "thinking time" to make the best of that technology.
"Digital cameras have made capturing the moment so easy and so immediate – sports photographers know the autofocus is unbelievably good and they're going to get a fantastic frame-rate," Marc says. "Cameras are so good now that it's easy to take the same pictures as everyone else, so you have to work harder as a creative photographer to set yourself apart.
"Today's technology should make you step back, look carefully at your subject matter and refine that moment you're looking for. You need to think: 'I'm going to move now because the light's changed,' or 'I'm going to put on a different lens or change the exposure because this isn't what I want to see.' For me, sports photography is about having that ability to find your own pictures and be true to yourself and your own photographic style. It's about being individual and being unique."
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Key kit for sports photography
With its high-sensitivity 20.2MP full-frame CMOS sensor, expanded 61-point Dual Pixel AF system and 4K video capture, the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II delivers class-leading performance. "It's quite easily the best pro camera I've had in my career," says Marc.
Ultra-high-performance L-series super-telephoto lens, featuring a 4-stop Image Stabilizer with 3 modes. Marc says: "This is my go-to lens for sports photography. It's so sharp and offers me so much opportunity to capture the pictures that are in my mind's eye."
A professional-quality standard zoom that offers outstanding image quality and a fast f/2.8 aperture throughout its zoom range. "This lens is a new addition to my kitbag and offers me a different perspective," says Marc. "It's so good, I wish I'd had it a few years ago."
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