Of the obstacles you face whenever you want to take a picture, low light is probably the toughest to overcome. Things get even dicier when your subject is moving.

#3 Lighting

Whenever light levels are low:

• you won’t have the shutter speeds needed to handhold long lenses successfully
• you can’t freeze the action even if you use a tripod or image stabilization because your subject is moving
• your lens might not focus
• color temperature or white balance might be an issue because most environments choose lights based on practicality and efficiency instead of whether it’s good for photography

Bear in mind, your ISO is already set to the highest that you can live with taking into account digital noise.
You can try:

• waiting till there is a pause in the action. Gymnasts often pose momentarily because they have to hold a pose for judging
• instead of just the action, get in close and see if you can capture facial expression like jubilation or dejection
• panning if your ISO is already maxed and you can’t use flash (see the picture in Part 1 of my daughter running before her vault)
• have an assistant shine a bright light on your subject pre-fcous at that point, switch to manual focus then work on your timing of when to release the shutter
• if no one objects, you could set up flash units on light stands to light an entire area and trigger them by radio slaves
• do a custom white balance by shooting a sheet of white paper if the White Balance presets are not working

#4 The Activity at the Event

Not every indoor event you photograph requires high shutter speeds.

Remember it’s more about the quality of the light not the quantity.

When your subject is running towards or away from you, you can sometimes freeze their motion with a relatively low shutter speed.

Take a look at the picture on the right.

Movement across your field of view requires a higher shutter speed to freeze.

Even if there is some blur in the picture, it may not be objectionable.

At times the motion blur adds an element of spontaneity to the moment because your subject obviously didn’t stop what they were doing to pose.

#5 Your Knowledge, Patience & Powers of Observation

If there is one tip I can offer parents trying to capture their child during a school play, or concert, it is this:

ask your child where they will be standing on the stage before hand.

If they are too young to know, then see if you can attend a rehearsal.

When you eliminate the guess work of where your child will be, you can concentrate on being on the right side of the aisle, closest to them and hopefully with the right lens.

When it comes to indoor sports, knowing how a game is scored is extremely important because it allows you to anticipate where to be for the best picture when a critical moment takes place.

At some point, the actual goal being scored, the winning basket shouldn’t be your focus anymore.

If it’s the final seconds of a game, for instance, the picture that tells the story is the jubilation or the dejection.

It is not literal anymore, the expressions of the athletes is what will tell the tale.

That’s why positioning in those instances is important. You always want to be in position to see their faces when they win or  lose.

So knowing the key players and coaches is useful because in the dying seconds of a game, you are keying in on those faces and watching their reactions as the final whistle blows or the final buzzer sounds or when the game deciding rally finally ends.

For games involving young children, you probably want to watch for reactions of parents and the players at the end.

This is the moment to shoot a lot. In fact this is the moment that you should just go nuts and make as many pictures as your camera will allow.

The reaction you see is genuine and real and can’t be recreated, that’s why.
Peter Phun Photography |