Photographing tennis with a phone, part 1: the basics
I'll say it till I'm blue in the face: if you're looking to get great photos the next time you attend a match, it's worth bringing any kind of "real" camera with you, even a small point-and-shoot. Literally anything will get you better-looking sports photos than your smartphone's camera, which really is optimized for taking portraits, selfies, and landscapes where nothing is moving.
Realistically, though, most of us will just have our phones with us. And that's fine! Phone camera technology has progressed leaps and bounds within just the last few years, to the point that, under the right conditions, it can take on sports as a subject. I've had just my phone with me at a few tournaments where the rules didn't allow professional cameras, and while I certainly would've preferred having my big Canon with me, I was always pleasantly surprised by the pics this thing barely larger than a deck of cards could get me. (The photo above of Sinner and Tsitsipas at the 2022 Rome Masters, which I took with my iPhone 13, is one of my favorite photos that I've ever taken.)
It does take some creativity, and your knowing your way around some niche features of your smartphone camera. Here's a guide that I hope will help improve the pics you're already getting, or that will inspire you to try some shooting the next time you go--because why not, if you've already got a camera in your pocket?
Caveats
Some things to be aware of when shooting tennis with a phone. First: You will have to be as close as humanly possible to the court to get good photos of individual players. Now, the adage "closer is better" applies even if you're blasting away with a 400mm f/2.8 bazooka, but with a phone camera, if you're not sitting within ten or so rows of the court, you're honestly better off sticking to wide-angle pics of the whole court/stadium.
Jannik Sinner at net, captured using an iPhone 15 (left) and a Canon R3 with 70-200mm f/2.8 lens (right). The picture on the left is also heavily cropped.
Even sitting real close, you will have to live with shots that are much lower in quality than what real cameras can give you. (I go a bit into this ask I answered on why that is.) Unless you're in the front row and the player is right in your face, you will need to crop your shots to get your player(s) looking reasonably large in the pic. And phone photography works best outdoors, during the day. At night, or indoors, the quality of phone-taken images plummets even further, to the point where you might not wish to bother with taking action shots (although other shots will be possible--see the very end of this post for why phones do poorly at nighttime or indoors).
All this is not to discourage you, or to bully you into buying a real camera (although it's an investment well worth making in my *totally* unbiased opinion haha). It is rather to assure you that, if you don't get photos you like on your phone, it's probably not you, it's your phone. Really. Remember: as someone shooting from the stands, you have a harder job than the working professionals do. You are shooting from a worse vantage, using inferior equipment.
If, under those circumstances, you can still walk away with a few shots you're happy with--that is an amazing achievement and you, dear reader, kick ass with a camera.
With that in mind, let's look at all the things you can do with a phone camera.
Action shots
Many smartphones made within the last few years will have cameras with two features essential for capturing sports action: burst mode and a telephoto lens. In burst mode, a camera will continuously capture images while you hold down the shutter button. A telephoto lens is a lens that makes distant objects appear closer. (Formally defined, it is a lens with a focal length longer than its physical length. A telephoto lens is not to be confused with a zoom lens, which is a lens whose focal length is adjustable, thus allowing you to "zoom" into and away from an object.)
The process of activating burst mode differs from phone to phone, so I'll leave it to you to look that up for your particular model. As for a telephoto lens, how do you know if your phone has one? Look on its back. If it's got three or more "eyes," one of those is a telephoto. On your phone menu, when you toggle between zooms (0.5x, 1x, 2x, etc), the telephoto will be the option with the highest number before "x," ideally 3 or up.
(You can also activate your telephoto lens by zooming all the way in until the image you want to capture is as large as you want on your screen. I would, however, strongly recommend choosing the x2/3/5/10 zoom option from your phone's menu, and not zooming in any further while shooting. Why? As you're zooming in--yes, the image on your screen will look like it is getting bigger, but once you've gone past your telephoto lens's native optical range, that image is not getting bigger while staying at the same resolution. Your phone is instead performing what is called a "digital zoom," cropping the image for you on your screen to give you the illusion of zooming in further. Now, as I said, you'll probably have to crop your phone photos anyway to make them look good, but there are two disadvantages to "pre-cropping" or using digital zoom while shooting on your phone. One, you'll probably find it hard to keep the image on your screen steady as you aim your phone. Two, if you zoom in too far and accidentally chop off a player's racquet or leg in your pic ... you're out of luck. By sticking to the native range of your phone's telephoto lens, you are giving yourself a margin of safety, and the freedom to experiment with crops later, while making life easier for yourself during shooting. Choosing the right crop is in fact one of the most effective ways to improve your photo, and is something I'll be discussing in a future post on photo-editing.)
So: you've figured out how to activate burst mode, your telephoto lens is armed and ready--now what? Fire away! Unlike on a real camera, you won't have to fiddle around with autofocus settings; your phone will automatically hunt out the subject via face detection, and all you have to do is activate that shutter button when you see what you like.
Things happen so fast during a point that you will have to be following the player you want to photograph from the very start--either as they're about to serve, or as they're getting ready to receive. Stick to that player all the way through the point. Phone cameras are a step slower than real cameras, so be sure to activate the shutter button well in advance of the action you want to photograph--e.g., just as the player is beginning to take their racquet back if you're capturing a groundstroke. (There's a whole method to this that could easily be the subject of its own post, but this is the quick and dirty version.)
Most of the time, you'll be hoping for a shot of the ball on the racquet, or right around that magic moment. "Groundstroke finish" shots can look cool too, though, so you can either hold your shutter button down all the way through the finish of a player's motion, or time your shot so that you're getting the end of their motion.
And take lots and lots of photos. Sometimes your phone will miss that moment of contact, sometimes you'll be late to the shutter button, sometimes you'll get that moment of contact but it still won't look great ... That's the thing about sports photography: you might need to take dozens, sometimes hundreds of crappy shots in order to land one good shot. Shoot as many photos as you are willing to inflict upon your phone's memory, then delete your outtakes later. (Don't forget also to delete the rest of the burst after you've selected your favorite frame.)
Choosing and editing frames from a burst sequence in iPhoto for iOS. iPhoto will let you choose to keep select frames or the entire burst. You can also edit frames individually, or apply the same edits to the whole burst.
If you don't have burst mode, or don't want to bother with it, there's one tennis shot you don't really need it for, and that is the serve. I've written a long guide on photographing serves, so I won't be going into this here, but this is one shot you can start honing your sports photography skills on if groundstrokes intimidate you.
Both these guys were pretty much right below me when I took these, but these photos are still cropped. My iPhone's telephoto lens has a focal length of 120mm, making it one of the "reachier" ones on the market, but I still find myself looking at large swathes of court on my phone screen when using it to shoot.
You probably will too, whatever your phone's optical range happens to be. But this is something you can use to your advantage. Often, when I'm shooting with my Canon 70-200mm lens, I can't get both players on camera unless they're pretty close to each other. With a phone camera on the other hand, it's a cinch getting shots that include both players and that therefore capture the competitive aspect of tennis.
Experiment with different moments and vantages: as a player is about to serve ...
... as they're chasing down a drop shot ...
... or when there are cat-and-mouse games going on (although these take some luck nailing).
Another nice thing about shooting on a phone is that the phone-- unlike a real camera--will not try to isolate a single subject when there are two or more players in frame. Real cameras will always want to do this, with the result that everyone but the subject will be out of focus, unless the people you are photographing are right next to each other.
Ons and Casper at the 2023 edition of Tie Break Tens, held at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. My camera zeroed in on Casper, leaving Ons slightly out of focus.
This makes shooting doubles, in particular, significantly easier on a phone camera than on a real camera. Now, I'm not an expert on how phone cameras work, so I don't know quite what's going on, but I suspect it's to do with the phone's inability to separate a subject (at that distance) from its background. For that you need a lens with a long focal length and/or large aperture (small f-number), and these phone camera lenses just ain't it.
Maybe the phone is trying its damndest to pick out a subject, but its best efforts look no different from where it didn't even try. But this is good news for you. Up close, yes, everyone in these phone pics will look pixellated and janky ... seen on the scale of a phone screen, in a thumbnail on your social media feed, everyone looks equally great!
Use that to your advantage the next time you take in some doubles. You might be pleasantly surprised with the pics your phone can get you.
Sinnego taking on Granollers and Zeballos at IW 2024. For more photos from this match see this post.
Portrait shots
When you hear "sports photography" you might automatically think of action shots--serves, returns, dramatic net rushes. But think of all the sports pics you see on your dash, on other platforms, in your preferred sports media outlet. How many of those are actually pics of athletes mid-shot?
Some, only. Many, probably even most are just pics of the athletes themselves. And nice portrait shots are something you can totally get on your phone, if you're close enough to photograph action in the first place.
The nice thing about shooting these is, you won't be needing to miss any actual tennis in the process.
Now, it can be tricky capturing the player while they're turned toward you and close enough to you. But even if you're sitting behind the baseline or in the corner of the court--meaning they will have their back to you most of the time--they will be turned toward you, however briefly, in between points, as they are getting balls from the ball kids or walking between the ad and deuce courts to receive. (Other opportunities to get nice full-length shots of players include as they are entering or exiting the court, journeying back to the baseline after a trip to the net, or walking back to the baseline from their chair after a change of ends. There's also that moment they run over to the towel boxes with their towels at the start of a match or set, although, with ball kids handling players' towels again, we might be seeing less of this now).
When it comes to getting a good portrait shot, two things are key. One is observation. Not everything that I mentioned above is going to work for you as a means of reliably capturing a player while they are turned towards you. It all depends on where you are sitting on the court.
You, the photographer, must observe patterns of movement and figure out when the best opportunities for capturing a player facing you are. Fortunately, tennis is a repetitive business: players will go through the same actions, the same journeys, many times in the course of a single match.
That means, once you've figured out when you can count on having them turned towards you for longer than an instant, you'll have identified however many opportunities you have for getting the shot you want.
The other key to getting a good portrait shot is patience. Your player might not show you their face or hold themselves in a posture that you like that one time you had your phone out and ready between points; so, be ready on multiple occasions. Spend at least a game, ideally two or three, lying in wait between every single point.
And as with action shots, take lots of photos. While I'm not constantly shooting between points, I'd say I might get one to two good portraits of a player in the course of a match--if I'm lucky. This ratio is not at all unusual for sports photography.
Carlitos, pleased about a winner. (Usually you will need to be following the whole point to get a player reacting like this, but here, I was able to whip my phone out just in time. I talk more about getting "reaction" shots below.)
Match moments
Portrait shots, while great, are kind of divorced from the narrative context of a match. So, too, are the majority of action shots: when I look at a photo of a serve or forehand that I took, I'll rarely recall which exact point it happened on. (Sometimes I'll even forget which match it is from.)
So I always like to grab at least a few "match moment" photos--pics of, e.g., the coin toss, players taking their victory bow at the end of their match, players at changeovers, etc.
Why not pretend, when the players pose for a photo at the net, that they are posing for you too?
Novak offering signed balls to the Indian Wells crowd; but first, he wants them to get louder.
Why is everyone going nuts? Someone is about to get a towel that Jannik Sinner used during his match.
If you've waited in vain all match for a good close-up shot, the autograph scrum is your best remaining bet. In this photo, Carlos was close enough to me that my phone defaulted to portrait mode (even though I stayed on my telephoto lens).
Getting good trophy ceremony pics really depends on where you're sitting. Here (Indian Wells 2024), they set up the podium facing away from me (boo).
"Match moment" shots are often a lot easier to take than action or portrait shots. They don't involve quick-moving subjects, nor does everyone in them need to be beautifully posed. And you usually know well in advance when they will happen. Every match, after all, will have a coin toss, a net photo and a handshake at the net afterwards.
My favorite "match moment" photos however, the ones I text my friends as soon as I've got reception again and look over months later chuckling and upload onto Tumblr to share with all you fine folks, will be of things that don't happen every match--like bee invasions, or romantic rain delays, or Daniil Medvedev telling Holger Rune "I've got eyes on you" after being blitzed by a point-blank volley. Or it could just be something as unexpectedly funny as the look on Jannik's face as he walks past his opponent pretending not to notice him.
Channeling his inner Zoolander? No, our full-time model slash part-time tennis player is just adjusting his hair.
Med being snarky about ... I don't know. The new balls. The old balls. Something to do with the balls. Oh, and he happens to be losing in this match. (Remember, Indian Wells is not a real hard court tournament.)
Carlitos, looking dreamy during a rain delay. (That ball girl is doing a way better job than I would keeping calm while holding that umbrella.)
Every photographer will tell you that getting photos like that involves some degree of luck. It’s true: you never know when these things happen until they actually do. But as a photographer, you also make your own luck. The more often you are observing what goes on around you, the more often you are prepared with your device out and ready to shoot, the likelier you'll capture such blink-and-you-miss-them moments.
One variety of "match moment" photo that is in fact 95% planning and 5% luck is the so-called "reaction photo," where a player fist-pumps, or yells, or puts their finger to their ear after a big point. Sure, big points can happen anytime, but certain categories of big points--break points, set points, match points--you will always see coming. Often, on such points, I'll follow the player who stands to convert; more often than not I'll be rewarded at the end of the point with some sort of reaction.
Sinner reacting in his usual over-the-top way to closing out his match (IW QF 2024).
You do have to be, as for action shots, following the whole point pretty much from the start to get the reaction shot, since you never really know when the point will end. You will also need to be sitting in the right spot for getting the reacting player's face. Ninety percent of the time, players will be reacting toward their boxes; so if you're unsure whether it'll be worth lying in wait and missing the whole point for your reaction shot, take note of where the player's box is; see whether a player reacting toward them, from either end of the court, will have their face visible to you.
You could also just, uh, watch the point like a normal person. Me, I'm not normal. I've got TennisTV and am happy hunting through the replay if it was a great point I missed. A great photo, though? Once that opportunity's gone, it's gone forever.
My motto, at least when I've got a camera in my hand, is: Shoot first and ask questions later.
Casper Ruud and Holger Rune reacting to points. Only one of them seems to be having a good day on court.
Aspect ratios and image orientation (portrait vs. landscape)
I had planned in this post to talk a bit about editing phone photos, too; but since I'm almost at my maximum of 30 images per post, that'll have to wait for another post. Let me wrap things up here by talking about two kind of nitpicky things that are still good to know about, if you've never given thought to them: aspect ratios and image orientation.
Both of these will not only affect the look of your final product, but may also impact the way you compose your image when you shoot.
Aspect ratio refers to the relation of an image's width to its height. A 1:1 photograph, for instance, will have a width as long as its height, i.e., it will be a square. I believe most devices default to 4:3, but I personally prefer to shoot in 3:2, which is the standard ratio for editorial sports photos. 16:9 is the aspect ratio used by most smartphone screens and by TV and computer monitors. 1:1, of course, is what Instagram uses.
Which aspect ratio you choose to shoot in is a matter of personal preference. You can also easily change the aspect ratio of a pic when cropping the image later, but I'd recommend setting your camera to your preferred ratio, as it will aid you in composing the image when shooting. If you don't have a strong preference as to what aspect ratio to use, I'd recommend setting 16:9 as your default, as that will fill your phone screen. No annoying black bars on either side of your phone screen when shooting.
(Note that some phones, like the iPhone 15, will invariably take a photo corresponding to the dimensions of its lens sensor--which I believe is 4:3--no matter which aspect ratio you choose. This means that changing aspect ratios is really basically "pre-cropping" the final photo. Even if you've got a phone that does that, I would still suggest setting your camera to your preferred aspect ratio, or to 16:9 if you are undecided, for the reasons I mentioned above.)
When shooting in any aspect ratio other than 1:1, you have a choice of having the long side of your image be vertical (portrait orientation) or horizontal (landscape orientation). Again, it's personal preference which you choose when shooting. I happen to like to shoot portrait for non-action shots of players and for serves, and landscape for everything else. Particularly, by using landscape, I am capturing the full width of the court; portrait, on the other hand, will result in a lot of useless space above and below the player(s), and restrict my options in cropping. (Ditto using landscape to get full-length pics of players: almost everything to either side of them will be useless space, and if they're too close to me I might not be able to fit them inside the photo.)
TL;DR: To get great tennis photos on your phone:
(1) You must have a telephoto lens and be sitting close to the court, ideally within the first several rows. Burst mode is a must for action shots.
(2) Action shots (apart from shots of the serve) work best outdoors during daytime. At night, or indoors, stick to shooting the service motion, portraits of players, and "match moments."
(3) Do not zoom in any further after activating your phone's telephoto lens. Beyond that, your phone is just cropping the image for you, and you are risking leaving out something interesting. You can always manually crop your shots later.
(4) For action (and reaction) shots, follow one player from the very start of the point. Activate the shutter button well in advance of the action you want to photograph, and hold it down all the way through the player's motion.
(5) For portrait shots, observe players' movements, taking note of when they are facing or moving toward you. A player will repeat the same sequence of actions many times in the course of a match, giving you many opportunities to capture them facing you.
(6) The more often you have your phone out, ready to shoot, the likelier you are to get great photos, action or otherwise.
(7) When choosing between shooting portrait or landscape orientation, think about how much useless space there will be around your subject or scene, and select the orientation that will minimize that.
(8) Set your phone camera to your preferred image aspect ratio; or, if you are undecided, try 16:9 (which will fill your phone screen) rather than the default 4:3 (which will result in black bars on either side of your image when shooting).
(9) Take lots of photos.
Happy phone shooting!
All phone photos in this post, except the first, are from the 2024 edition of Indian Wells. IW always had a generous camera policy, but changed it midway through the 2024 tournament to prohibit cameras with detachable lenses. Hence, my getting serious about this phone photography business.
Questions? Want me to cover a topic in tennis photography that I haven't? My inbox and DMs are always open! 🤗
