Stop-Action Photos

photo assignment8: stop-action photography

These stop-action photographs were taken Oct. 17, 2020, at Cheer Athletics in Plano, Texas by Lexi Goodman. The photos here features Allstar elite coaches stunting or teaching athletes who are considered flyers. Goodman is a journalism major at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. (Lexi Goodman/SMU).

For this assignment, I tried my best to freeze each subject in motion. Most of the time, I was shooting at 1/1000th of a second or at least close to it. Especially since I shot these photos inside, I needed to significantly adjust my ISO and aperture accordingly for every angle and action shot that was in a different spot of the gym. I made sure my subject was running, flipping, jumping or some sort of motion in action.

I tried to shoot under the best lighting in the gym with whatever activity was happening at 1/1000th, but obviously I didn’t use it every time since I was not in the sunlight so it was a bit harder to shoot at this shutter speed even if my subject was not moving super quickly. However, I’m assured that my subjects were as sharp as I could get them. However, I can definitely see how indoor sports action like basketball, volleyball, hockey can be difficult to shoot, like cheerleading that I was shooting, at 1/1000 because some areas of performance are poorly lit. I’ve actually shot a couple of these photos due to poor lighting at about 1/250th. In these cases I was definitely shooting at an ISO as high as 6,400. I took each of these photos at Cheer Athletics in Plano, Texas where I work as a cheerleading coach.