How to get into sports photography: 15 pro tips for making the leap from hobby to career

"A great sports photo is one that makes you gasp," says sports photographer Eddie Keogh. "It has to have drama – an incredible moment that also looks outstanding. It's a rare thing, as it probably should be."

Capturing those moments and being able to make a living out of it would be a dream come true for many sports fans, but that's just what Canon Ambassadors Eddie Keogh, Martin Bissig and Richard Walch have done. Here they share their tips on how to get into professional sports photography.

"Choose a sport that you find really fascinating. For me, that was snowboarding. You need to become part of that scene or culture, and then you can start shooting from the inside. To break it down, find a sport you like, become as good at it as you can, and make friends. Then you can get access to athletes and to events and, because you understand the community, you photograph the sport better."

"Things happen quickly in sport. If there's a bad tackle, there's a chance the player might get sent off, so you have to be ready in case the referee pulls out a red card. I have a camera around my neck with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM lens, which usually covers the goal, and a second camera, with a Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS III USM lens, for midfield action. The quality of cameras such as the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III is now so good that you're getting pictures from the far end of the field, because you can crop in so much. You tend to need fast shutter speeds for sport, such as 1/2000 sec for football. If you want to get a bit arty, you can drop it down."

"I shoot with the full-frame mirrorless Canon EOS R5. I switched completely to mirrorless as soon as the full range of native RF lenses came out. I carry almost all my equipment in a backpack, so the smaller and lighter it is, the better. One of the big advantages of the EOS R5 is that you have the possibility to really customise it to your needs. There are tons of options that enable you to make the camera behave in the way you want it to. For me, switching to mirrorless is definitely the way to go."

"It's helpful if you can work with athletes who are about the same age as you, so you can grow with them. They might have a small sponsor at the beginning, but in a couple of years, they get bigger sponsors and you can build your career with them. When they're young, they also need photos and will be willing to spend time with you. If they want to use your images for their autograph card or website, then you're helping each other for free. If their sponsors want to use the images, it becomes business. If you're friends with the athletes, they let you get close, so it's not a problem if you don't have the fanciest equipment. I recently photographed the 13-year-old daughter of the first snowboarder I ever worked with. It's a really cool story. She's a concrete pool skateboarder, which is like the hardest skating you can do. He has two daughters, and they both surf, skate and snowboard."

"A lot of people just want to get to big league football matches as quickly as they can, but you can learn so much more by photographing football, rugby, hockey or tennis at your local park. Get out in all weather – not just when it's sunny, because rain can make pictures more atmospheric – and practise, practise, practise. I started photographing my brother's team in the local park, and in the past couple of years I've done personal projects on Sunday morning football. I probably enjoy that more than going to shoot a big team like Chelsea because it's so different. It's lovely to bring the skills I've learnt over the years back to the park, because there are so many great pictures literally just around the corner. If you have an eye for photography, you'll see it – you don't need to go to big stadiums to learn your craft."

"Amateur photographers always compensate for their lack of knowledge or skills with pro gear. They're quite surprised to be told that it's not the lens that takes a shot – you need to be there to capture the action at the right time. The 10x zoom Canon RF 24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM is not a 'pro' lens, but it's everything I'm looking for. When I'm photographing mountain biking expeditions, such as up Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, I need my equipment to be compact and lightweight. It's more important for me to be able to cover a huge zoom range, and not need to switch lenses at high altitude and -20°C, than to have a super-expensive prime lens. If it came to it, I'd rather compromise slightly on quality, but be able to tell the story by not missing a shot.

"You have to know the story of the day to get the right pictures. If a player is going back to a former club, they might get more abuse from the fans. If a manager has lost four games on the trot, there will be speculation he's going to lose his job, so you need to watch for a reaction if he loses again. If he puts his head in his hands, that's the kind of picture that gets a lot of play."

"I often use an ultra-wide angle lens, such as a Canon RF 15-35MM F2.8L IS USM, or a longer zoom, such as a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM [now succeeded by the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM]. What I do is actually landscape photography with athletes in it, so for me it's quite important to have a wide angle so I can tell a story in one shot. If I'm too close to the athletes, you can't tell if the picture has been shot in the Himalayas or in Switzerland. I don't use mid-range a lot, which is the standard view in sports photography – it's not what I’m looking for in a shot. I'd rather go to the extremes, shooting at 12mm or 200mm, than the standard 50mm view, or anything in between."

"When a football team wins a big championship, it's not the images of the game that stand out, it's the shots of the team celebrating, standing on a bus surrounded by thousands of people. You have to shoot around the sport: the emotions, the politics, the celebrations and the disappointments. If you shoot a marathon, you don't shoot the start, you shoot the finish, because that's where the emotion is. Look for peak action and peak emotion. If you can combine those in one image, you've got it."

"In the past, newspapers were my bread and butter, but now people want content for social media. It's about keeping it fresh and mixing up the angles. Get yourself to an event and think about what you want to get out of it. At Wimbledon, there are photographers' seats in different locations so you can go high, low or to the side. At football, I almost always have a camera set up behind the goal with a remote trigger. With 22 players on the pitch, it's 50-50 whether you even see the player scoring a goal."

"Detailed knowledge of your sport is vital, because you need to know how people move and what looks good. If I were to take pictures of skateboarders, I might think they look good, but if I showed them to skateboarding fans, or to pros, they might say, 'The hand doesn’t have the right angle'. I don't know, because I'm not a skateboarder, but I know exactly how mountain biking is meant to look. Also, you can have the best possible location and the nicest bike on the planet, but if you have someone sitting on it like a sack of potatoes, it doesn’t look good. It's quite important to be able to give athletes instructions."

"The more commercial the sport, the easier it is to sell images. I was really lucky because, when I started, snowboarding took off, as did demand for images. I quickly became one of an elite few shooting the sport globally. If you want to shoot soccer, or track and field, there will be 50 other photographers with you, and it's a big challenge to better them."

"How many pictures of a mountain biker on a bike can a magazine print? Someone sitting by a fire and drying their shoes, that's the kind of thing people want to see. Focus on the athlete, but what's going on behind your back is as important as what's going on in front of your lens. People want to see the side shots, because that's what makes the story interesting."

"Snowboarding can be super-close, so the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM is a common lens, or you could shoot with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM, which is the perfect all-round sports lens. If you're shooting sports where there are restrictions, such as motorsports, you need long lenses, and they cannot be long enough – 400mm is your standard focal length. I use the Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS III USM and it's incredible because it's so light, it feels like a much smaller lens in your hand. The f/2.8 aperture really makes a difference – the athlete pops out against the background. If you shoot mountain biking or your friends playing sport, then you can go as close as you want, which makes it easier on the equipment because you can use standard lenses between 16mm and 200mm."