Learning to shoot football and shooting football at night are two practices with a big learning curve. Since you are on the field, I assume you know the coaches and AD so ask if you can practice your football photography at some practices. That will help you practice your play following skills without the added complexity of difficult lighting AND the players will love some of the photos you capture because you will have set up and lighting conditions that will never occur during an actual game. This practice won't make a huge difference but it will definitely help if you are new to football photography AND you will start to learn some of the typical plays and moves of that specific team which will help you during the actual game.
It may also help your play avoidance skills 🙂 I always make sure that I know what is behind me so that I can clear out QUICKLY while still staying in place as long as possible to capture as much of a play as I can safely. IF you cover a game with grass sidelines, consider wearing cleats if the field has recently seen heavy rain because you may be surprised at how poor the footing is on wet muddy grass. One game I covered last year required the athletic trainer to tape up two officials who slipped and fell on the sidelines.
High school stadium lighting frankly sucks at most locations so try to get some good images during warmup and early in the game when you may still have some natural light to help supplement. I shoot most of the game with a 300 2.8 on one body and a 70-200 2.8 on the other and most of the time they are set wide open. I developed different preference than many and shoot almost exclusively in manual mode. Depending upon the field lighting, I like to fix ISO changing it as full darkness sets but some fields have very uneven lighting and I use auto ISO for those. When there is reasonable light variance across the field, you can shoot fixed ISO and correct in post with your RAW files. I reduce shutter speed as required to get a decent balance between sharpness reduced by noise and sharpness reduced by blur. I have played a lot with different servo AF setups and I find my best hit rate is with a single point but that is going to vary by camera and person so experiment and see what works best for you and your equipment.
Because I do take a variety of photos during a game, I don't lock the control wheels for shutter speed and aperture but I do make sure to check the helpful information in the viewfinder. You don't want to find after the fact that you accidentally shot an entire quarter with shutter speed set to max because you put a finger on the wrong control. Some people like to lock the controls to prevent this but I like to be able to change quickly without unlocking.
As Ernie stated, location is critical and choose different places during the game to get an array of shots. You will get entirely different looks from behind versus down field of the offensive line and no matter where you are, sometimes you will just be in the wrong location to get a great shot. Like the athletes, don't dwell on a missed opportunity because there are many photo ops during a game and if you are thinking about a missed one you will miss several more.
I will spend some time on the "opposing" sideline to get some shots and I will take a few with narrower aperture and reduced shutter speed to get a couple of the team with the crowd in focus behind it. You will quickly develop a sense of staying out of the way and officials have zero patience for a non-participant who gets into their space and they do have to move quickly to follow the play. Reviewing images during the game is something you should only do rarely and very quickly because you can easily become a hazard the second you stop paying attention.
Football photography is a lot of fun once you get past the initial part of the learning curve but again I can't stress safety for you and the players enough. Plays develop very quickly even away from the key part of the play. You may be well downfield of the running back but a leading blocker many yards ahead may send a defender flying your direction as he clears the route. It has been a LONG time since I played high school football and I have no desire to get tackled!
Take plenty of photos of the warmup and throughout the game, review them in post and learn what worked and what didn't, and a few games in you will be amazed at how much progress you have made. I shot soccer for years but first shot high school football last year and it took a couple of games to figure out what worked best for me.
And on edit, if you are shooting for the team be sure to get plenty of shots of the supporting cast on the field and not just the leaping catch or the killer tackle. That catch wouldn't have happened without the offensive line giving the QB an opportunity and that touchdown saving tackle was likely set up by another defender. Football is a team sport and all of the players deserve their moment in the sun (or in this case the dim stadium lighting).
A few from the first game I shot this season, it is really nice to have high school football starting again and I am looking forward to a game tonight!
Rodger
