I’m really enjoying my camera and learning a few things from H.E. about shooting. One of the things he has always told me is that if I want to challenge myself sometime, I should try to shoot some soccer action shots. Soccer, he says, like lacrosse, is hard to shoot well. It’s fast moving, relentless, and unpredictable.

I’ve seen soccer on TV, and it’s probably one of the most boring sports I’ve ever watched. They always shoot it wide, with so much grassy field filling the frame, and I hardly ever see any close-ups featuring the individual players. Still shots, on the other hand, of any sport published in newspapers or magazines always look so heroic or sexily dramatic.

So I thought I’d give it a try and see how I fared, and guess what … H.E. is right. Soccer is a pain to shoot.

I took over 380 shots of a local soccer game yesterday, and out of all of these shots, I like maybe only a handful of them—most of them not really even action shots. In fact, most of the shots make me cringe. The players either have their heads or limbs cut out of the frame or look forever frozen in some awkward-looking dance move. Sometimes, people in the foreground are blocking the play action, or the people in the crowd are the ones in focus instead of the players themselves. Yikes.

I’ll try again when I get better at this shooting thing, but for now here are a couple of the decent shots.

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