Sometimes it’s easy to overindulge in the scenery surrounding the sport and miss the essential details that make the sport interesting. If you are climbing, move in close and get shots of hands at work, a foot on a narrow ledge, untangling a “rope salad.”

And don’t forget the faces. There’s always ample opportunity to get great shots of a face bent over a campfire blowing it back to life, a frosted face on a ski trip, or the squinting face of a climber while he is trying to spider his way up a precarious pitch.

The main difference between wilderness sports and others is that there are no sidelines, no spectators. Either you’re a participant or you’re not. This may appear to be a disadvantage, but in the long run, all it an do is ensure better pictures. Of course, it depends on how involved you get, your geographical location, and your disposition.

Fortunately, most sports are illuminated by the best light available–the sun. The advantages of natural outdoor lighting are numerous: One light source illuminates everything and the lighting is constant; it allows you to use the fastest motor drives; it is balanced for daylight film and is consistent; and it’s available all year round, anywhere you go.

There are two drawbacks: It can’t be moved, and as a single light source it limits your shooting positions. The lighting is harsh on clear days, the angle is unappealing when directly overhead because of cast shadows, and it is frequently too dim on overcast days. But if understood and used properly, you can use it to your advantage. Changes in lighting give outdoor pictures a distinct look. No two are ever lit exactly alike. Learn to exploit the sun’s light and control it.

Time of Day – You can’t always pick the time of day when you’d like to shoot. Although competitive events are usually prearranged on a tight schedule, noncompetitive events don’t have that rigidity.

One National Geographic photographer says he only shoots between 6 and 9 in the morning and between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, and finds a local bar in which to entertain himself the rest of the day. I’m not sure what logic led to his success, but he claims the system is fail-proof.

The angle of light is lower during the early morning and late afternoon and is warmer and softer than the midday sun. During those hours, it illuminates subjects at a more pleasing angle than from directly above, and creates modeling. The resulting long shadows show definition that would otherwise be lost in harsh midday light. The best conditions are when the sunlight is diffused through clouds, creating light shadows. An overcast day is especially good for photographing people when detail would otherwise be lost in deep shadows.

In order to perfect your metering you need to see through the eyes of the meter. Perfect exposure is easy: it’s a combination of the right shutter speed and lens aperture for any given scene. But as we all know and have pictures to testify, arriving at that combination is not quite as simple. Your camera is equipped with sophisticated technology to help you figure out each lighting condition. But you must understand how the meter views the world. When you look through the camera, your eye and the film both record approximately the same scene. Not so for the half-blind meter.

As a kid, did you ever wonder what it looked like through the eyes of your cat or dog, or even a fly? Well, if you’re curious about what your light meter sees, take the lens off your camera and look through it. That’s about all the light meter can see. So when you look through the camera and see delicate plays of light bouncing off your subject’s profile, remember all the meter sees is a slab of gray. You have to program the fine-tuned data yourself.

The next chip of information we need to feed into your gray matter is the notion surrounding the 18 percent gray card.  All light meters and films are calibrated according to this standard gray. Light meters are brainwashed into believing that the entire world is nothing but a big, gray mass. They are taught that all things look average gray and if they spot anything lighter or darker something is dreadfully wrong and their controls must be adjusted until the scene looks gray again. If there is extra white in the frame, the meter will call for less exposure to return the white values back to gray. If darkness overrides the scene, the meter quickly determines that extra exposure will lighten the scene enough to gray it up again.

Therefore if you focused your camera on a piece of gray paper and followed your light meter reading you would always get a perfect exposure. Or if you filled half your frame with a white card and the other half with a black card, again you would have perfect balance and your meter would have no complaints. The problem is that few scenes are in such balance.

What would happen if you took a picture of a pure white card? Your meter would look at it and say, “Let’s make this thing gray,” and underexpose enough until the white actually looked gray. If you did the same thing with a piece of black paper, your meter would compensate again, and you’d still get a gray picture. If you want solid white or black to show as white and black in your picture, you have to manipulate your meter. Since most scenes are not balanced perfectly, understanding this principle will help you fine-tune your exposures to achieve better results.

How can you move things out of your picture if they don’t move, like trees, buildings, mountains, or big, bad-looking guys?  Easy, study psychokinesis…or read the next paragraphs.

Changing lenses. You can cut out a lot of unwanted background by using a telephoto lens or a wide-angle may include enough of the surrounding scenery to give it a better setting.

Changing your camera angle. Remember, the camera does not always have to be held at eye level lie binoculars. Think of all the different angels from which the camera could be aimed.

Changing your shutter speed. One of the easiest ways to wipe out the background in sports pictures is to use a slow shutter speed and pan with the subject, streaking the background so nothing distinctive shows through.

Changing the aperture. Remember, you can always open up your lens and use the short depth of field to blur ugly backgrounds beyond distinction.

Changing the light. Lighting plays an important role in outdoor photography. Unfortunately, many photographers don’t realize the amount of control they have over it. You can use shadows to hide elements, or direct sunlight with a fill-in strobe. You may not be able to move the sun around like a floodlight, but you can gain a 360-degree difference in your angle of lighting simply by moving to a different side of your subject.

Supernatural powers would be a tremendous asset to any photographer, but lacking them keep these tricks up your sleeve and you’ll be able to perform tiny miracles to get what you want.