Tennis : BLS Womens Open in Limoges

[Chataignier]

Pauline Parmentier on her way to knocking out no 2 seed Garcia at the 2019 Open de Limoges.

The Limoges Open is an upcoming professional tennis tournament played on indoor hard courts. It is the 13th edition of the tournament and part of the 2019 WTA 125K series, offering a total of $125,000 in prize money. The 2019 event took place at the Palais des Sports de Beaublanc in Limoges, France, from 16 to 22 December 2019.

[Manfred M]

I like the composition and the movement that is implied with the shot.

Focus seems to be off just a touch; the word "Limoges" is quite sharp, but the player is just a touch soft, so I wonder if the focus lock came a bit too early or if this is a touch of motion blur. The shutter speed of 1/950th second is probably a bit on the low side for a fast moving sport.

[selig1656]

Nice capture and I agree with Manfred.

[Shadowman]

Nice shot.

[Chataignier]

During my visit to the competition I tried to get some shots of the ball at the moment of a service.
Interesting problem. These ladies serve at around 150km/hr which translates to around 40m per second. Burst firing is useless, between 2 frames at 10/s the ball has moved 4m !

In fact, for a shot with the ball within a few cm of the tennis racquet there is a window of around 1/500s. Think about that, this is not the shutter speed, but the timing of the shot that has to be within a couple of milliseconds to have the ball more or less in contact with the racquet.

The only way I found to do it was to study the movement of the player, take a few test shots at wide angle, see where the ball is and then creep up on the right moment to release the shutter by trial and error - a lot of trial and error. Fortunately, the service action is very consistent and after a while I managed to get some shots of serves with the ball in frame.



Not the world's greatest image I agree, but I was already at ISO 5000 to get this and pushing the ISO higher to reduce shutter time felt counter productive. More a technical challenge than an artistic one !

[pschlute]

You captured the moment alright.

[William W]

. . .During my visit to the competition I tried to get some shots of the ball at the moment of a service . . . The only way I found to do it was to study the movement of the player . . .

In Sports Photography we will almost always see a Rhythm and often, a Repetition.

Tennis Athletes at that level of competition are Rhythmic AND Repetitive at their Service: maybe they will have two three or even four different services, but each will have a Rhythm and each will be Repetitive.

There will probably be a Rhythm to what Service they choose: a simple example is one service might be typical to the Deuce Court and another typical to the Advantage Court.

Any Rhythm can be made into a Beat: once you, (the Photographer), understands the beat, and can mimic it, including the delay of the shutter release, you can get to 9/10 (90%) of the shots you want.

WW