Letterbox crop - tips for good photography

Hi reader! Sorry I am a day late but work and a football match, Manchester City v Villareal (Final score 2-1 to City) got in the way.

As it happens the match gave me food for the blog. As I was taking pictures I wondered whether a letterbox crop would be better for the images than the normal dimensions. Certainly cropping brings the action closer, and with a forward moving game like football the narrow perspective perhaps adds a sense of pace and direction to the image. What do you think?

Framing images in this format would certainly make for an interesting display. Bespoke frames would probably be needed.

All these photos were taken under floodlight; no flash. The camera was a Nikon D300 with a 70-300mm lens. I use 3200 ISO at f5.6 and 1/200 of a second. A bit grainy for my liking.

The sports pro photographers in the last picture were probably using 500mm lenses and were probably getting down to f2.8. This would allow a faster shutter speed and more action freezing.