December 6, 2022
nina singh: anticipating the shot
STORY BY emily trage / edited by olivia mckeon
Nina Singh (’24) is a photographer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her photos have won multiple National Scholastic Art and Writing awards, and her work has appeared in the Cornell Chronicle. She works as a Marketing and Communications Assistant with Cornell’s Center for Regional Economic Advancement through an internship with its program Rev. At Ithaca College, she’s working towards a degree in Business Administration with a dual concentration in Marketing and Sport Marketing and a minor in Entrepreneurship.
Emily Trage sat down with Nina Singh to discuss her transition from film photography to digital, her different approaches to capturing sports and events, and her plans for incorporating photography into her future career.
ET: How did you get started with photography? And when did you fall in love with it?
NS: It started during high school, sophomore year, when I took a film photography class. I guess it’s weird because I didn’t start with digital, I started with film. I got the film camera and had to manually learn how to do apertures, focusing, all of that. Especially lighting. Lighting was the worst thing—just learning how to do all of that manually and then obviously having to take out the film and develop it yourself. It’s a lot.
ET: That’s really cool. Do you think that having to learn everything manually on a film camera better equipped you to understand digital?
NS: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. Because basically that got me my start. I liked it so much my art teacher actually let me keep the film camera I used in that class. I still have that, but obviously I can’t shoot everything on film. It’s not really reasonable. So, I bought a DSLR camera during the summer between my junior and senior year, a Canon Rebel T7i. Then I just kept going with my digital stuff. But I still shoot film sometimes.
ET: I assume that means you’ve worked in a dark room?
NS: Yes.
ET: What was that experience like?
NS: It’s definitely something. I honestly feel like film photography is the most nerve-wracking thing. You could put your heart and soul into taking those pictures and making sure that all the settings are just right. And then you do one step wrong in the development process, and it ruins your whole film. It doesn’t even necessarily mean you did anything wrong. Like sometimes the chemicals just don’t want to work, or your film was already damaged before you put it in. And there’s no way of knowing that until you develop the film and do all the work. That’s the frustrating part.
ET: Do you like the flexibility of being able to go in and edit your photos afterwards when shooting digital? It must take a lot of pressure off you to make sure everything goes just right in the shoot.
NS: Yes. Also, before even doing photography, I did video editing, so I was very good with Adobe Suite and the digital component of editing on a computer post-shoot. So, yes, that part is very nice. But there’s something about film that just hits different. It’s the only way to put it. When the picture does come out right on film, it feels so much better than digital because with digital, it’s just a simple point-and-shoot. You can take a picture and go on Lightroom and adjust everything, but with film, once you put in all that work and then you see it pay off, it’s one of the best feelings.
ET: What kind of lens do you use for your shots, and does that affect how you approach taking pictures?
NS: The Canon EF 70–200mm telephoto lens is what I’m using for work right now. But before that, I only had the basic lens, which is like a Canon 18–55mm. It doesn’t have that much range, so I did a lot of close-ups because I couldn’t really zoom in that much. One of my favorite pictures in my portfolio is one where I just went up super close to my friend’s eye and took a photo on a whim.
ET: Oh yeah, I saw that photo on your website. It’s really cool.
NS: Yes. I didn’t always have a certain kind of shooting style, because I just didn’t have access to that many lenses. But I did like doing those little close-ups when I could. Since I got this new lens, I’m really enjoying it. Over break, I went to some of my high school sports games and took some great pictures. It just makes it a lot easier having this telephoto lens to do zoom shots.
ET: And what type of subjects do you typically like to shoot?
NS: I'm a big sports fan, so I love shooting sports. And I’m very much an in-the-moment kind of person. So, especially my freshman year here at Ithaca College, I would always just have my camera on me, taking pictures of whatever was around me. But yeah, sports. Obviously I do event photography for work as well. Sometimes it’s not even work because I enjoy it so much. It’s kind of nice. So, work events, sports, and friends and family are my main subjects.
ET: So, you typically capture people in your photos?
NS: Yeah, I’m not really into shooting the environment, I guess. If I’m around something cool, like the Ithaca Falls or something, I’ll obviously take some pictures. But it’s not my forte, and I don’t have an interest in it. I’m not an outdoorsy person. I can’t even deal with a spider.
ET: Oh, I’m terrified of spiders. What do you tend to look for when shooting a picture with your digital camera? I’ve noticed in looking at a lot of the pictures you take, there’s a big focus on light.
NS: If I’m looking at how I want to shoot a picture, I’m big on symmetry. I think that’s my biggest thing—making sure everything is aligned and situated just right. I don’t know if you know about the rule of thirds, but that’s important in photography. Your subject normally shouldn’t fall in the middle of the shot—it should be off to either one of the sides. That was one of the first things I learned in film photography. I’m very anal about my symmetry, and I’ve had to redo so many shots because something just doesn’t look right to me.
And then yeah, I do like messing around with lighting. Again, with the close-up of my friend’s eye, the light was hitting it exactly right. And I remember thinking, “I need to take this picture now.” So, lighting is a big one. But it’s more of an opportune thing. I don’t make artificial lighting with light boxes or anything, but I have an eye for noticing when the lighting is perfect for a shot.
ET: So, you focus more on natural lighting?
NS: Yes.
ET: How would you describe your editing style? What aspects of your photos do you like to enhance?
NS: Again, I focus a lot on symmetry. If it's not right in the picture, I work on that. But for most pictures, I guess it’s just part of my style to always decrease the color yellow.
ET: What kind of effect does that produce?
NS: It creates cooler tones. I’d say my pictures often have cooler tones, at least most recently. Obviously, editing styles change and develop, and they also change depending on what you’re shooting. For my hockey pictures in high school, I always made those look very blue and cool. But for my work pictures, I try to keep in some yellow because they’re supposed to be more basic. And then I love to bump up the saturation. Saturation is good, but it’s always important to find a balance. You don’t want to make anything too oversaturated because then the picture will look artificial. Creating that balance makes it still look natural, but enhances the colors of the picture. And that’s also where vibrance comes in—you need a good mixture of both of those.
ET: You mentioned sports photography. What originally ignited your interest in capturing sports?
NS: Well, I’ve always loved watching sports. The first time I started shooting sports was during the summer I got my digital camera. I was a captain on the soccer team, but during one of the captain’s practices, I ended up breaking my wrist. I still wanted to come to the practices because I loved my team, so instead of playing, I would just take pictures. And then senior year, I started taking my camera to my high school football games. One day my athletic director came up to me and asked if I wanted to take some pictures. I was like, “Yeah!” This got me access to the field, and that’s when I really started doing sports photography—for those Friday night football games. My athletic director even let me travel with the team, and he would pay me to take photos.
ET: That’s awesome! Does sports photography require a different approach to general photography? Obviously you’re dealing with moving subjects and you’re rather far away from those subjects most of the time. So, how do you approach that?
NS: I guess for sports photography, it’s really different from all other photography because you have to understand what you’re shooting. If you’re taking pictures of a football game, you need to understand how the plays work and what’s happening next. Sports are unpredictable, but you need to be able to try to predict anyway. Think about a play in a football game: You see the quarterback has the ball, and you know he’s going to throw it. But you have to watch where he’s looking to predict where he’s going throw it, and aim your camera based on that.
It’s not in my portfolio, but I have a great picture of one of my classmates from high school in a football game. I saw the ball leaving the quarterback’s hand and just started taking the picture. Because of that, you can see the whole sequence of the ball’s trajectory in the shot.
ET: That’s amazing.
NS: But if you didn’t have that knowledge of football, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to get those shots—or at least you wouldn’t be able to capture them as well.
ET: Right, it requires being able to anticipate the action right before it happens.
NS: Exactly. And it’s also about positioning yourself—you have to know where the action is going to happen in sports.
ET: Is there an artistic element to editing sports photos that you have to consider?
NS: In sports, you really have to differentiate yourself and your photos. Otherwise, your pictures are going to look like every other sports picture. Somebody could just take it on their phone right? This picture here won an honorable mention from the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In thinking about how to make it stand out, I edited the photo to emphasize the light on our team’s football player, and faded out the background where the opposing team is huddled. The main person in this picture is actually the son of Mike Tomlin, who’s the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
ET: No way!
NS: Yeah, he loves that picture. He’s one of my close friends. Very nice guy. I’m usually frantic when I shoot sports—I’m kind of everywhere at once, clicking down, shooting, shooting, shooting as much as I can. And then hopefully, I end up with good shots. But this picture is a little different. I took it in between plays while the opposing team was huddling up. There was a little bit of downtime in the game, so I got a rare chance to set myself up to take a good shot, one I knew would turn out nice.
ET: It’s very Friday Night Lights.
NS: It’s funny you say that—that’s actually the name of the picture, “Friday Night Lights.”
ET: No kidding! A very apt title. Also, as you mentioned previously, you have experience doing event photography for your workplace, Rev, on the Commons. What is Rev and what’s your position there?
NS: Technically speaking, I’m a Marketing and Communications Assistant with Cornell’s Center for Regional Economic Advancement. Rev is one of their programs, probably the biggest one. We’re located on the Commons.
ET: How is event photography different from other kinds of photography you’ve done?
NS: For me, event photography is a lot more relaxed. Because with sports, especially if you miss a moment, it sucks. And it’s very easy to miss a moment. But since events are slower-paced and more predictable, it’s kind of hard to miss anything. At work, I can go up to whoever’s heading the event and get a timeline breakdown for the agenda. For example, they could tell me that at 6:25 they’re going to announce the winners of a pitch competition or something. And then I can position myself accordingly.
ET: Are there aspects of event photography that surprise you?
NS: The part that nobody really talks about is that it’s so awkward. Because we do networking events, right? So, everybody’s standing around talking and eating their food, and then there’s me with my camera in the corner of the room zooming in on all these people. It’s funny—a few people have definitely noticed and tried to make weird faces.
ET: It’s like an extreme form of people-watching.
NS: Yeah, and you just have to do it. It’s your job. But imagine being in their shoes, and somebody holding a camera with a giant lens is just staring at you, clicking away. Nobody talks about the awkwardness of that. This isn’t really an issue with sports, because athletes love getting their pictures taken. And besides, they’re usually too focused on the game to notice.
ET: Is there any artistic approach to event photography?
NS: Event photography isn’t necessarily as artistic, if that makes sense. I’m mostly taking general pictures that might be put up on the company’s website or get used for social media posts. They’re supposed to be basic.
ET: Have you won any awards for your photography?
NS: Yes! I’ve won four awards, plus the honorable mention I talked about earlier. Three of those awards are from the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. They give away gold keys, silver keys, bronze keys, and then honorable mentions. One of my pictures won a gold key—the picture I took of my friend’s eye. I titled it “Ocean Eye” because she has these lovely blue eyes that were catching the sunlight just right after soccer practice one day. I had my camera on me, so I took a picture. One of the things about Scholastic contests—especially with photography—is that you can only do minimal editing. You can adjust small things, but nothing major. A lot of people don’t believe me when I say this picture is pretty close to what it looked like on the camera. But that’s why I took the photo—because it looks unreal.
ET: That’s so cool. What is your favorite shot you’ve ever taken?
NS: Wow, that’s a tough one. There’s this picture I took of the sunset from the Terrace 6 lounge here at Ithaca College. I’d just brought back the lens that I’ve been using for work—the 70–200mm telephoto lens. It had just rained, so the clouds were low in the sky and the sun was setting. So, I pulled out the lens—I was testing it out and just zoomed in through the window and thought, This is a really cool picture. You can see the fog at the bottom close to where the hills are, and then the cloud covering above. There’s this interesting reflection thing that happens through the window, too, which makes the sun appear mirrored on top, and some of the clouds as well.
ET: It’s a beautiful photo. Do you have a “bucket” shot, or one photo you dream about taking before you die?
NS: Well, I love Manchester City—the Premier League team. For anybody who knows soccer, the Champions League Final is the one competition that Manchester City has never won. But let’s say Manchester City wins someday (hopefully this year!). I’ve always dreamed of capturing that moment after the win, seeing all the emotions and celebrations of the players and getting a really good close-up shot—even just a goal celebration, right? That’s the key shot: a goal celebration. Let’s say I’m on the corner flag, and somebody’s doing a knee slide right in front of me, and I get that picture of a Champions League Manchester City Final. That is it in my head.
ET: Amazing. So, how do you want to continue with photography moving forward?
NS: Moving forward as I’m growing into my professional career, I definitely want to intertwine photography with my work. Obviously, I’m doing that already. I’m a marketing student studying sports marketing and entrepreneurship. Nothing in there says anything about photography or cinema, but photography is pretty easy to intertwine with marketing without having it be my main focus. And I never wanted it to be my main focus because I never wanted photography to feel like a job. Otherwise I would lose interest in it, and I don’t want that to happen because I love it. But yeah, I’d like to keep doing event and sports photography. Especially if I go into sport marketing or social media work. It’ll be a lot of fun. Hopefully just here and there, shooting some stuff. And obviously always having my camera on me, shooting what’s around me and keeping up with that.