Overcoming the difficulties of shooting in bright light & dark shade

One of the biggest difficulties I find when shooting sports as we come out of winter is the bright sunshine and shadow that often split a pitch and stadium in half. Last weekend I was at Loftus Road for QPR v West Brom, and then the Madejski Stadium for Reading v Aston Villa, and both supplied extremely tricky lighting conditions.

I cant post any pictures from the football on here due to copyright restrictions, so I found a nicely illustrative shot of Delon Armitage to show how you can make the situation work to your advantage.

There are two main challenges posed by having one half of the pitch in bright sunlight and the other in deep shade:

1. Where to sit
2. How to set the camera up to handle the massive exposure differences as a player runs from dark to light or back.

Choosing where to sit is always very tricky. At the Reading game, I was after a particular shot of a Reading goal celebration, hoping that they’d beat Villa and cause a major FA Cup upset. That shot dictated my position completely. However I had to trade the shot for the light, and sit at the side of the pitch with a lot of the stands behind being brightly lit, and players near me in shadow. Needless to say there weren’t many other photographers sitting nearby. This would mean a lot of poorly lit “standard” shots with overbright backgrounds. Usually, I’d have positioned myself with the shaded stands in the background to make the players stand out more. However, all was not lost as I made sure that I had dark stands just up to and behind the Villa goal so any Reading celebration would look good with the players running towards me (they generally head for the touchline where the coaches are).

Happily, Reading slotted in 2 goals and both times the scorer ran straight at me, resulting in some fab and nicely valuable celebration shots that no other photographer will have got. I love it when a plan comes together. Unfortunately, their value tumbled as Villa slotted in 4 in the second half! Life just sucks sometimes. However, sacrificing the best lighting position for the shot was the right thing to do in this situation. I did stay in the same position for the second half, but unfortunately Villa’s scorers were either screened by linesman/TV cameraman or had their back to me, so no joy there. Lesson for next time – the away team scorers will head straight for their fans so position accordingly.

Setting up the camera for these conditions can be very tricky. In consistent lighting, I usually shoot in manual mode, ensuring I get the aperture and shutter speed I want, and using ISO to balance accordingly. If it’s a late game, there’s a gradual compensation as the ambient light gets darker and the flood lights come on – usually by upping the ISO. When a player moves from blinding sunlight into dark shadow though, you will end up twiddling dials on the camera like a posessed person and most likely miss your shot.

At Loftus Road and the Madejski Stadium, I was seeing a variation in shutter speed from 1/5000th in the sunlight to 1/200th in the shadow. As the last thing you usually want in sports photography is a slow shutter speed, maintaining at least 1/800th is a priority. This would generally mean shooting in shutter priority mode (Tv), but if you left the camera to its own devices this would result in a too-small aperture (high f/stop) in the sunny parts to give a nice blurry background to isolate the subject.

So, you want both aperture and shutter speed to be fixed, and the only variable to be the ISO, which you want the camera to bump up automatically in the shaded areas. To achieve this, (on Canon 1D bodies) I use shutter priority mode, set the shutter to 1/800th or 1/1000th, and then set custom function 1-13 “Set aperture value range” and enable a min aperture of say f/4.0 and a max of say f/2.8. This will keep the aperture in those ranges to ensure I get nice subject isolation with a blurred background. I’ll then set custom function 1-8 to 2 (Enable (ISO speed)). This will bump the ISO up if the exposure is too dark. I’ll set the ISO on the camera to 100. Generally I’ll use centre weighted average metering, but may also use spot metering on the active focus point if the teams shirts aren’t all white or all black.

The result is the camera always giving you a “safe” shutter speed, and adjusting automatically via boosting the ISO as soon as a player moves from sun into shade. As long as you get the metering mode set appropriately, you’ll end up with excellent results and save yourself a whole load of button pressing. Get it right and you’ll have plenty of shots like the one of Delon Armitage above.