One sport that I enjoy to photograph is soccer. The intense action, the ball position and most of all the facial expressions on the players, makes for many interesting images. However I do find this game to be technically challenging from a photographing point of view. Shooting soccer does requires a little knowledge about the game which helps develop a sense of predicting where the ball and play is going. This allows one to simply frame and prefocus the shot in that location. I discovered that the more practice one has shooting soccer the better one becomes producing usable images. Bright overcast and cloudy conditions I find are ideal to photograph soccer. This combined with the lowest possible ISO to allow a fast shutter speed to freeze the action and a mid-range aperture to allow the best possible depth of field, are key. This image was shot at 1/1000 sec, f 7.1, ISO 800 at a focal length (DX) of 200 mm. This particular meeting between two very competitive teams was the final championship game of the tournament, was not decided until the tenth and final sudden death shoot out kick.
