It is so huge that is it estimated to be worth over $620b.
From gaming, to soccer predictions, and careers, there are huge opportunities within the industry.
And that is exactly what we will be doing today.
I will be taking a look at one interesting career within the sports industry that anyone can get interested in.
In this post, I will share with you how you can become a pro sports photographer.
You will learn:
Who Are Sports Photographers?
What Do Sports Photographers Do?
Top Skill You Need if You Want to become a good sports photographer?
How To Start A Career As A Sports Photographer.
Ready?
Let’s dive in.
Who is A Sports Photographer?
A sports photographer is a specialist who is hired specifically to shoot pictures of sporting events and athletic.
Sports photographers can be on a freelance basis or they can work for website, sports blogs or newspapers.
What Do Sports Photographers Do
In order to understand more about sports photographers and what they do, we will be looking at the job description of freelancer sports photographers.
Take photographs: One of the most important jobs of a sports photographer is to take pictures of sporting events or athletics.
Tell Stories: A sports photographer is expected to be able to tell story through his/her pictures
Develop firms and Printing: Taking photography is not the only thing a sports photographer does.
You must also be interested in seeing the final firm or photography you have taken. This means you must be interested in the printing and firming aspect of photography
Key Skills You Need to Become A Good Sports Photographer
If you want to become a good sports photographer, you will need to master or at least have some of the key skills mentioned below:
1.Creativity
2.Technical photography skills.
3.Patience and concentration.
4.Attention to detail.
5.Strong networking skills.
6.Team working skill
Let’s look at them one after the other
Creativity: Your creativity skills are very important. You need to know what makes a good or bad photographer and you need to know how to combine the element of nature and your environment to be able to take a good shot.
Technical photography skills: You must learn and know the basic principle of taking photographs. This is where taking a photography class might come in. Passion might be good but passion alone will not take you far.
Patience and concentration: Sports is a fast and moving game. That means you need to have a high level of concentration so as not to be carried away with the events that is happening around you and be able to stay focused.
Attention to detail: Focus and details is everything. For you to be able to take good photographer, you must be someone who is able to pay more attention to every little detail.
Strong networking skills: For you to become successful, you need to sharpen your networking skills.
Team working skill: Even if you are a freelancer, you might still find yourself working with other people. The ability to have good team working and team bonding skill is very important. If you look at this skills, it is practically tied to you being able to have a good and strong networking skills which will allow you work with other people in the industry.
How to Start A Career As a Sports Photographer
Now that you know almost everything that you need to know about who a sports photographer is and what they do, we will look at how you can begin your journey into becoming a well sought out sports photographer.
Get your equipment: A bad workman blames his tools. If you want to get to become a good sports photographer, you must be willingly to get good equipment. One of the most important equipment you will need is a camera and a good lens. If you want your photography careers to boom, then you need to invest in getting a good camera. Luckily there are tons of places you can get camera and good brands are available almost everywhere.
Know Your Game: Football is a game of passion. You need to know about the sporting industry itself and not just about taking pictures. This is because football or soccer as it is popularly called thrives on passion, so you must be able to capture the right mood of the athletics which will now resonates with the fans. This means you need to know your game inside out.
Practice: Practice they say makes perfection. And it is the same with photography. As a photographer you need to be able to take perfect shots. And how can you know what a perfect shot is if you are not practicing. The more you practice, the better you get at understanding not only your camera but also what makes a good short and what sucks at being a good shot.
Network: If you want to go far, don’t go alone. This is true in every profession and the sports industry is not an exemption. The level of network you have will determine what your net worth will be eventually. You need to start building your network from friends you met to sports bloggers, athletics and even fans.
Be professional: If you want to really make a career out of sports photography, you need to start acting and behaving professional. This means knowing and obeying all the rules of football together with the rules of the profession.
Feedback is important: Getting feedback is crucial for your work. Share your early works with your friend and always ensure that you ask for feedbacks. Feedbacks are mechanism that allows you to grow and if you get good feedback and implement this into your work, you are going to find out that you are growing faster than you even thought possible
Have an online presence: With the introduction of social media and web 2.0 websites, there is not reason why as a sports photographer you do not have your own online presence. Having an online presence means you are able to showcase and have a portfolio of your work which could be more useful. I discuss this in point 9 just below
Take Classes: Learning and development is going to be important if you do not want to become just a medicroe sports photographer. That menas you may need to take photography classes to sharpen your skills. There are tons of places where you can learn more about photography. You can use Youtube or take digital photography classes on Udemy
Apply for jobs: If you have followed the steps above, now is the time to start applying for jobs. There are numerous job boards and websites that you can check out if you want to quickly get a job. Remember your portfolio that I asked you to build earlier on, you can also send some of thise to publishing houses and if they like your images, they can take you on as a staff.
That is all.
Everything you need to know if you want to become a pro sports photographer. Have any question? Please drop in the comment below.
