Game Faces (Sports)

[blakemcguire]

Hey guys

What are your opinions regarding people's silly looking faces when they're playing sports? Do you work to minimize their effect, or do you simply take them as part of the photo? I shoot for the university newspaper, and most of what I do is sports. As a result, I have quite a number of pictures of players making the silliest faces and I'm not sure what to think of them.

[Shadowman]

Part of that is the emotion of the sport, what irks me is supposed champions who have to make dominant fist pumping gestures, the old "yes I just scored on you" movement especially practiced by tennis players.

[RustBeltRaw]

If you agree that a good photograph is about emotion, gesture, and light, a victory or defeat shot from sports is likely to cover emotion and gesture rather well. To my mind, the odd expressions are part of the reality of the game, so why shouldn't they be good photos? That said, many are extremely unflattering. Sometimes you're after intensity, sometimes you're after beauty.

Shooting roller derby yields a lot of strange expressions. But if you know the players, the shots feel different. Swift Justice, for instance, is a smiley ball of sugar off the track, but I have a great shot of her wearing a truly epic kill face. I'll post two for comparison when I get home tonight.

[Geoff F]

For me, it depends on each individual case, Blake.

Showing that a competitor is straining their bodies, and faces, is fine. But it should make them look good as well.

If they just look silly or embarrassing , I would delete the images.

[RustBeltRaw]

Swift Justice 90% of the time.



Swift Justice set to kill!



Nothing wrong with a good game face.