So in this installment of the Ikaika Warrior Blog, I'm going to ask the question:
"What makes a good Airsoft Action Photograph?"
So to start you need to ask yourself, Is there any way you can improve on what I do already? Most people will get home and dump the contents of their memory card onto Facebook or the web without even looking over the pictures first! At the very least you need to get rid of the blurred and out of focus images.
So what’s expected in an Airsoft action shot? Being in that moment of time, catching the emotions, the rush of adrenaline, the fatigue, that moment of victory or defeat. Capturing a great image means using what’s there at the time – mud, snow, rain, dust, mist, smoke – to make your subject standout. The background is almost as important as the guy shouldering a great looking rifle and you need to fill your view finder with what’s important and cut out what’s not. So when you look at your own work, be critical and work out what you need to change or try the next time. These observations will eventually become second nature BEFORE you press the shutter – that doesn’t mean that at some magical moment all your shots become perfect, but it does mean that you will have a greater choice of end results. And on the subject of greater choice, in the days of film photography, you really had to be carefully on your shots because first of all you didn't see the results until the film was developed and second to cost was prohibitive. Now you have a huge number of choices in digital photography, the megapixels rating of camera phones have started to reach the level to capture good quality so don't count them out either.
Composition is key! If you don’t know what the rule of thirds is – find out. As always, rules are made to be broken but you must learn the fundamentals first. Train your eye to recognize it in any composition and then you will understand when it could be broken – or shouldn’t be. Whenever shooting in close on someone shouldering a gun, personally, I always try to leave a lead out. What I mean by that is, if the guy is in the right of the image and aiming left; I always leave a piece of empty frame on the left as that’s the direction he’s shooting.
Likewise if a player is standing where the light makes for a good portrait, whatever direction he/she is looking, I leave a space where they’re ‘looking into’ – It just makes for a better composition (in my eyes)
This is something I feel we see too much in people’s photos online. There’s very little need for it and it’s definitely not suited for most action photos in Airsoft. That said, it can be used to give an awkward or imposing feeling intentionally, but this has to be used carefully and sparingly to give the right impact.
Now you have one of the D-SLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex - the kind that you change lenses on) or a digital camera that has both program and manual modes for action photography, try using Aperture Priority (AP) and Shutter Priority (SP). These modes will save you a lot of time and heartache. AP will allow you to set how much of the subject and scene you want in sharp focus whilst SP will allow you to creatively blur the action or freeze it depending on what you want to achieve in the individual image. The Exposure Compensation (EV) allows you to simply adjust the brightness/darkness of the shot whilst using these shooting modes There are a lot of creative controls on these types of cameras, so take the time to learn what they do and use them to your advantage.
As for editing – this is purely down to personal preference. When it comes to Software, there are some powerful editing suites available. They can look complicated and slightly daunting but everything is easy once you get your head around them. There are lots of tutorials available for most suites on-line, so learning is not going to be difficult with a little bit of time and patience. I personally use Picasa for most of my editing, it is free to download and use and it includes all the basic fixes, such as cropping, straightening and color fixes. http://picasa.google.com. Ultimately the mood in a photograph can be as easy as playing about with the colors. The people in the shots know it was a freezing day but what about those who weren’t there? Try colored filters over your images to set the mood, cold days with a blue hue and warm with a light orange (but not to the point where everyone looks like they’ve had a bad spray tan!)
At the end of the day, anyone can buy a camera, learn photography techniques and get the shots perfectly exposed, but it takes a bit more time and dedication to learn to ‘see’ the photo before it’s taken. Photography isn’t about the make, model or value of the camera, it’s about the eye behind the view finder, being one step ahead of the action and being smart when it comes to editing.
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