Kid's sports pictures

[gardener]

I've been taking pictures of my grandkid's soccer, baseball, and what not teams for a while now and have found myself going from one extreme to the other on what pictures are most often enjoyed or requested by the parents.. Note that I'm not selling the pics at this point but with the amount of requests I receive on a weekly basis, that may be an option at some point in the future when I feel the pics are good enough to be proud of and actually have my name attached to them...
I started out taking "game" and action pictures, usually in landscape framing. I then read several articles that mentioned individual "action" pictures are the most requested so flipped the camera (20D most often set with a 100-400 lens) to portrait and started taking more individual static and action pictures on a continual basis.
While I realize every parent is most interested in his or her own kiddo and their performance, I then realized that I had gone to the other end of the spectrum and wasn't taking anymore general "game" pictures that would give a feeling of the actual game action, instead focusing on individuals rather than the team aspect.
While all this back and forth is going on, I'm also trying to learn cropping for the best view of the individual scenes, whether individual OR team.
Sooooo... the question: what do others do and what views are most requested? I fully realize that for free, I could take the pics upside down and catty wampus and no one would have a right to complain but I do want to do a nice job and get some valuable experience at the same time. If that wasn't so, I'd take my little P&S out there and get a few pics of my darling little grandbrats and let it go at that... I have the equipment though and a healthy dollar investment IN that equipment so why not take advantage of the capabilities of the camera and gear for pictures worth something more than camera practice...
What to do? What to do...
Your opinions and experience will be much appreciated...
Steve W

[Duffy Pratt]

I don't think there is any general answer to this. I guess one of the best things you could do is pick up a book of the best pictures from a magazine like Sports Illustrated and see what kind of shots you like. Then start by trying to mimic those.

For baseball, I think you might want portrait type shots of the pitcher and batter, standing alone. Maybe tighter landscape shots of the batter, catcher and umpire. I would do baserunning shots in landscape mode. Fielding shots could go either way. I would not negliect the on-deck circle, the dugout. Lots of interesting things are going on during a game that are only tangentially related to the action.

For kids soccer, the shots that tend to have the best impression are mid-action shots that show an attacker (or two) and a defender (or two) in concentrated conflict. So here, I think the answer lies somewhere between the "game" as a whole, and individual players. What most people like to see best is a picture of a moment of action, which typically includes a couple of people focused on the ball.

I hope this helps.

Duffy