About Action Shots Photography
Sharon and Richard Birtles have been running their business Action Shots Photography for four years now. In addition to agility shows, they cover cricket and football and around ten weddings each year.

They specialise in action and sports photography and have learned how to produce good, sharp, clear images from all these events.  They are very busy and pleased to be so!

They are  official photographers to the United Kingdom Polocrosse Association who retain their services each season from April to October. They are contracted to cover six of their tournaments each year including the National Finals, usually held at Liscombe Park.

What is Polocrosse?
Polocrosse is a fast and exciting game. Most of the best shots are of riders galloping head on at the goal with the ball in their net. As players are allowed to go straight through the posts, and often do, no-one except the goal judges are allowed near the goal for safety reasons. Therefore, Richard and Sharon have to sit some 30 yards behind the goal so they use a huge Canon 600m.m. f4.0 lens, sometimes with an extender to make an 840m.m. f5.6 lens to be able to fill the frame with a horse and rider even from fifty or sixty yards away. This set up ensures safety for the horse, the rider and photographer!

This Canon lens is an "L" series ultrasonic type which gives silent instant focus, and they use it in what is known as 'predictive' mode, meaning that the camera and lens combination actually tracks the subject - even at full gallop - and the computer chip predicts exactly where the subject will be when the shutter opens. In other words although the subject will be at a certain point when shot, it may well be another seven and a half feet nearer when the shutter actually operates.

The camera body they normally use can shoot at ten pictures per second so a whole roll of film can go in three and a half seconds if you keep pressing (which they don't.) They usually give a short burst and expose say three or four frames which usually guarantees that, at least, one will be perfect. Not necessarily 'sharp' as they are usually all sharp, but pictures of the rider and horses with their eyes open. This lens is the largest telephoto lens currently in everyday use in the world and is an absolute pleasure to use; it is a beautiful piece of engineering.

This year Action Shots Photography has invested a substantial sum in the latest professional digital cameras and printers. As from May, they shall be printing digitally on site to enable you to have your pictures on the day instead of having to wait until the next time you see us. This is a new and exciting venture and, as far as they know, they are the only professional sports photographers to offer this digital service and are really looking forward to using this equipment in the field. Obviously, they say that they may have a few teething troubles as in any new venture, so please bear with them for a while.

We used to think photographing horses was difficult until we started doing dog agility. Now we really know what fast means!

We use a different technique altogether for agility. Firstly, as we can get much closer to our subjects, the dogs, we are able to use shorter focal length lenses although they are still large aperture or 'fast' as it is more commonly called. This term means that the depth of field is very small resulting in a clearly focused subject and a blurred background.

Secondly, the animals move so fast that even Canon's autofocus system can not keep up; and theirs is the fastest system in the world which is why we use it. To capture a clear image of a dog jumping we have learnt to manually focus the camera on the jump, often with it set up on a tripod. We wait for the dog to take the jump before we take the picture, and we often take two or even three shots to try to ensure a lovely clear image of the animal doing what he/she loves to do but you probably only see the one we think is the best and the others have to be thrown away, so please remember this when you consider what we charge for our photographs !

We have, at times, found it difficult to get the animal in the frame as some dogs jump the hurdle in the middle and some jump it to one side. So if we have the camera set up for one part of the jump, then you can bet your life the next dog will jump it at a different point ! Yes, we could zoom out to ensure we get the whole jump in, but these pictures are not nearly as good as ones where we have zoomed in and captured the animal filling the frame, as you know. Also, as the depth of field is so shallow, even if we get the animal in the picture , because we have had to lock the focus on the part of the jump we think the dog will take it may not be totally sharp.

We could, of course, just set up at an easy to photograph jump and use a fairly small lens with a large depth of field which would guarantee that the animal was sharp and that we always got every dog in the frame. Anyone can do that but, and quite a few people have mentioned this to us. Photographs taken like this can be a little repetitive and boring. We pride ourselves in the quality and variety of our images and, being animal lovers ourselves, we think we have a good idea of what other animal lovers like to see. In fact, we are always grateful for the feedback given to us and depend on you, our customers, to help us to keep providing the images you want.
Richard Birtles