Alexis Cuarezma is a San Francisco – based sports photographer, who specializes in both on-location and in-studio portraiture. In this video Alexis walks us through his photo shoot with IFBB Bikini Pro, Ashley Pfaff, providing a great sense of the process. He begins with the mood board and guides us to the final result, explaining his lighting choices and techniques.

One more has passed, the event that unites the world together showcasing the best athletes on earth has come to a close in Brazil. We witnessed triumph, we witnessed heartbreak, legacies stamped, and living legends made. Packed in the two weeks of the summer Olympic games were hundreds of special moments, some even iconic that we'll remember for years to come. And it was up to the photographers to make sure these moments would live on forever.

With our current sports-focused Critique the Community, now seems like a great time to share some tips and best practices to help you improve your sports and action photography in 2016. Read on for 11 solid suggestions to help you become a better shooter.

While browsing the web for editing tips, I ran across this video tutorial that had me intrigued based on the title "How To Make A Sick Mountain Bike Edit." I normally don't watch mountain bike videos, but this one had me from the beginning.

Ken Block, owner of DC Shoes and action sports mogul is well known for his incredible skill in a rally car. He's also been known to make some incredible videos, such as his original Gymkhana piece. For this installment, Gymkhana 5, Ken decided that he wanted to take over San Francisco: and that is just what he did. He also made sure that it was captured to perfection: I can't imagine that any less than one hundred cameras were used in the making of this piece.

Candide Thovex: legend. The French skier’s latest cinematic marvel was released today, and it’s the most epic action sports video of all time. Of. All. Time.

CrossFit is taking the world by storm. With 11,000 affiliates and growing, it has become a great way to get into shape and is an untapped resource for photographers to sharpen their skills. I started shooting CrossFit as a member in 2010 and learned many things along the way. This is what I learned and how you can improve your skill set.

About a year and a half ago, I was walking on a local beach and realized that for a few weeks of the year, the sun would set in a perfect line of sight down the beach. I thought it might be a fun photographic challenge to create a super telephoto picture with a body builder "holding" the sun in an Atlas style pose. In my mind, the entire scene would be lit rather than have a typical sun silhouette image. Little did I realize how much work I was getting myself into.

Super telephoto prime lenses are not very common except in the world of professional nature and sport photography. Today, Australian photographer Blake Parry talks about his experience with the Sigma 500mm f/4 lens.

Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson is being heaped with praise by fans online over the way he handled accidentally knocking a photographer to the ground. In a clip from the game, he is seen helping her up, and later private messaged her through her social pages to check she was OK.

Have you ever had a bad day where you broke a piece of gear? Even if you're still lamenting that potentially pricey incident, I'm willing to bet it wasn't as expensive as this lens that Giancarlo Stanton just a hit a baseball off of.

Lens makers these days are coming up with some incredible options that were unheard of just a few short years ago. That continues here, with the Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 lens put up against the Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 in a battle for the title of best wildlife lens. You could also make a case for it being an action sports lens shootout too. So, how do they perform, and which comes out on top?

In my filmmaking career, I’ve had the opportunity to film some pretty unique events. While shooting I often come across other event shooters and realize that we’re a unique breed. Essentially, we're people willing to sacrifice food, rest and comfort to tell an amazing story. Even though we accept the stresses that comes with event shooting, there are a number of ways we can plan ahead and minimize headaches.

There is often an element of risk in sports photography: flying baseballs, out-of-control cars, or in this case, a crashing skier. Swiss Skier Lara Gut slid into Photographer Sean Haffey during her second run in the giant slalom in a scary collision at the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Yes this is a photography website, and no this video doesn't really have anything to do with photography. But being that I own this website and I'm excited to go snowboarding in a few weeks I thought I'd share this incredible video of all of the best snowboard tricks from the last year.

About two years ago, in the spirit of adventure and creativity, I decided I was going to try and photograph the ocean with artificial lighting. I had an image in my head of all the things I’ve seen in daylight hours, with the stark contrast of an illuminated wave against a dark backdrop. A run-of-the-mill day down at the beach certainly wasn’t going to do either. We were going to go straight to the top and shoot the biggest and meanest waves we could find.

Nikon’s mirrorless lens lineup is slowly but surely growing, but a good lens selection can’t rely on only first-party offerings. Other manufacturers matter greatly. The new Tamron 150-500mm is a welcome addition to the Z mount, with its long telephoto range, decent aperture, and compact size.

If you were impressed by Getty Images' table covered by high-end Canon DSLRs and lenses, then you should definitely check this out.

The progression of technology has allowed for us to capture shots in angles that we would not usually be able to capture. Robotic cameras have the ability to fit into spaces and locations that a photographer would usually not be able to get to. These are fully controlled by remote as well. It may very well begin to change the landscape of photojournalism. Check out what you can expect and how it's done within.

Can the Canon R mirrorless perform well enough under the pressure of shooting an NFL football game? There is more to camera performance than the quality of the photographs.

Last week Sony unveiled their most ambitious Alpha camera to date with the a9. The 24.2-megapixel mirrorless camera takes on the general form factor of previous a7 II bodies and packs in their latest photo technology with a strong emphasis on autofocus, speed, and removing distractions such as shutter noise and screen blackout in continuous shooting. This all adds up to a product that has the potential to make a large impact on the sports photography scene. Today I'm excited to share a number of images I shot with the Sony a9 of a range of track and field events plus hockey and ice skating.

The two heavyweights when it comes to flagship sports and wildlife cameras are the Sony a9 II and the recently released Canon 1D X Mark III. The ability of the autofocus to track a subject is critical, so how do the two compare when placed side by side?

While in Macedonia shooting video and stills for the company Petzl, photographer Keith Ladzinski was capturing aerial footage in the village of Prilep with a DJI Phantom II. The unexpected happened and the quadcopter got stuck on a church steeple in the middle of a shot. How they got the Phantom back was even more of a spectacle. Check out the first few minutes of this video to see footage of both the crash and the climb to get it back.

I have never really been into extreme sport videos ever in my life. The second I see someone decked out in Red Bull apparel, I am immediately turned off. But this video in particular has caught my attention. Everything from the directing, editing, camera operating, and sound design has been formulated perfectly into a four minute YouTube masterpiece.

Our good friend David Bergman was hired by Sports Illustrated to shoot the Olympics once again this year. David is becoming more and more well known for his Gigapan images which require a camera to take hundreds of pictures that are then stitched together in post. The result is a single image that you can "zoom" almost endlessly into. If you want to see every detail of the gymnasium at the Olympics, check out this incredible GigaPixel image.

Canon, Sony, and Niko: the three major manufacturers within the photography industry. For a long time, Canon and Nikon held a duopoly, until Sony started producing full-frame mirrorless cameras. We now have a triopoly with Canon, Nikon, and Sony going to head to head with their flagship cameras.

This year I was asked to be one of the judges for the 2016 Red Bull Illume contest. This contest has some of the most impressive sports photos taken each year, and choosing my favorites was not an easy task. Today the winners have officially been announced.

While we all might not all be a fan of his on-camera persona or his punchy photography style. I think we can all agree that Jared Polin aka FroKnowsPhoto does a great job of testing out and reviewing the latest and greatest in the Photography industry. In his newly released “Real World Review” Jared takes the newly released Sony a9 and puts it through the paces at a professional soccer event in Philadelphia.

Almost all of us have broken a piece of camera gear at some point and felt our hearts sink as we looked at thousands of dollars on the ground. However, I doubt any of us have broken gear as expensive as these shattered lenses.

Recently our own Lee Morris shot a model photoshoot entirely with an iPhone 6s Plus, showing that with proper lighting technique, a good model, and proficient use of editing software, you can obtain professional looking results with even the most humble of cameras. Andrew Weber, a professional sports photographer, decided to take it one step further by capturing the unpredictable environment of a primetime NFL game with only his iPhone 6s Plus in hand. Weber was kind enough to answer some of our questions and provide a great sampling of his photos from the shoot.

Some of the highest performing cars, up close and personal. Formula 1 recently released a video to give us a track-side glimpse of what it's like to photograph these cars week-in and week out. Photographer Vladimir Rys was also kind of enough to share some of his images to help illustrate what they capture.

You might someday find yourself working within the overall vision of someone else – like an editor, an art director or, in this case, a director of photography – when shooting on assignment for publications as big as Sports Illustrated. Limited time with your subject and being asked for simple lighting against a simple background isn’t uncommon in this industry. So how would you go about getting the type of photographs your employer wants plus creating a dramatically lit and colored set for yourself?

I like biking, I even like mountain biking, but there is no part of me that wants to take a bicycle full-speed down this track in Mandelieu, France in broad daylight, let alone at nighttime, and I guess that's why I'll never be featured in one of Red Bull's brilliant extreme sports videos.

Fashion icon, model, plaything. No matter how you see her Barbara Millicent Roberts (a.k.a. Barbie) proves that she's still got it at the age of 55 by landing the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition (technically a promotional cover-wrap for the American International Toy Fair). Even though this tongue-in-cheek video was primarily created for humorous reasons you still get a good glimpse behind the scenes with legendary photographer Walter Iooss.

After finishing up our swimwear photography with Joey Wright, I've gained a new appreciation for the genre. I was surfing through past Sports Illustrated swimsuit sessions and I ran across this years'. It happened to have Ronda Rousey in body paint.

The first lesson I learned about shooting baseball was to always be aware of where the ball is. One photographer lost track of it for a brief moment, and it resulted in a very bad day for him.

Drones with stabilized cameras are nice, but capturing serious action shots at close range requires a different type of aircraft with serious piloting skills.

Sigma are walking the line of affordable and high quality again, this time with a long telephoto lens for Sony E and L-Mount.

I know, I know. It's about the photographer, not the gear. But if you can look at all the gear Getty is sending photographers to the Olympics with and not salivate, well, you're stronger than me.

After Oiselle, sponsor of runner Kate Grace, posted photos congratulating the athlete on qualifying for the Olympics, they received word from the U.S. Olympic Committee telling them to remove the images.

If you are not ready to plunge into the price tag of the hard case underwater housing but are serious about wanting to get into more shoots working with the element of water, Jake Kelsick has tested out the capabilities for your new adventure.

As the Winter Olympics draws to a close, Getty Images has offered this fascinating insight into the logistics of covering this remarkable and incredibly cold event. Battling geography, climate, and equipment while coordinating a huge team of photographers is an immense challenge.

As jarring as it is to acknowledge, we all die. And the manner in which we die is something that many of us have probably contemplated at different times over our lives. For legendary photographer and publisher Allen Margolis, he passed away doing what he loved with those he loved.

We've teamed up with 49ers photographer Terrell Lloyd and Datacolor to talk about Lloyd's prolific career as a sports photographer and the importance of accurate colors in sports and action images.

Yesterday (1st November) saw the release of the first episode of Nigel Barker’s new show in conjunction with Adorama – entitled Top Photographer. Released as a web series through Adorama’s YouTube channel, this is the first, 25-minute episode, and you can watch it right here!

The term "centripetal" refers to a force that makes a body follow a curved path, and in this case, an iPhone 6 is that body. "Centriphone" is a play on that term, as an orbiting iPhone shoots super slow-motion footage of a skier at the center of its path, as they cut their way down the side of a snowy slope. This clearly takes selfies to the next level.

High-end sports photography typically involves a combination of expensive camera bodies with even more expensive lenses. What compromises are involved when capturing fast-moving action using equipment that doesn't cost tens of thousands of dollars?