There’s a few reasons I enjoy tennis sketching. First, I love the game of tennis. Love to watch it, love to play it. Second, it gives me practice in drawing the human figure in poses that no live model could hold for very long. Lastly, drawing from tennis action shots gives me practice in indicating clothing (drapery and folds) on a figure.
Aside from sketching however, I like digital photography and the challenges that shooting the game of tennis brings. I have shot a huge bank of tennis photos over the years. Even though I don’t make it a point to travel to the tennis ATP tour events, I am still able to get some sweet artistic photos at local pro events. One of those events is happening this week called the “Futures of Pittsburgh” (now sponsored by PNC Bank), which is a low-level USTA event.
Here are a few shots I’ve taken at that event in years past that are decent enough to stand alone as artistic photographic compositions as opposed to just simple sketch reference shots.
As every digital photography enthusiast (which I am one) will attest, only one out of about every fifty or so shots ends up being good enough to process into a nice artistic photo composition. That’s the great thing about digital photography though - no wasted shots, since it’s so easy to delete them. And I used the term “process” because if you’re like me and shoot RAW as opposed to JPG, then there’s a bit more work to be done after pressing the shutter button and downloading to your hard drive.
More photography stuff next time!
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