Striking action portraits are a signature style for Dustin Snipes, a sports photographer in Los Angeles.

"In my sports action pictures I try to stay away from traditional, high-impact shots. Everybody with a camera that shoots 10 frames per second can get that. I want to be able to see the picture in front of me and not just pull the trigger. I want to get something unique.

"I definitely try to use a lot of color and movement, in my sports portraits especially. I really enjoy that. I spent the last several years doing sports action every day, but I like to create the entire environment. I would go to an event and find the perfect location and then wait for something to happen there."

An example he cites is a shot at a cross-country race in which a racer had the misfortune of falling face first into the course.

Snipes had scouted out the course carefully until he found a place where he thought something memorable might take place.

"I was using a wide lens, an AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED, and I was just on the other side of the ropes where they were turning right in front of me. I wanted to feel like I was in the action."

For most of his action shots, Snipes relies on the Nikon D3.

"I love how it feels in my hand," he says. "I switched over to Nikon because the focus is a lot better than on any other camera I've ever used. The people at Nikon let me borrow a couple of camera bodies and lenses, and I ended up buying everything they let me borrow. I loved how fast it was. I love the noise reduction. I shoot a lot of nighttime events, and the noise reduction is amazing. The other cameras didn't have that smooth quality to the picture that Nikon does."

To capture the action, "a lot of times I find myself using smaller lenses, an AF-S NIKKOR 70-200 f/2.8G ED VR II or a wide lens, like the 14-24mm f/2.8, to create something unique," he says. "I'll shoot with an AF-S NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G ED VR II if I'm focusing tightly on the players. Because of its versatility I'm also able to focus fast enough to get the action."

For portraits, he'll switch to the D3X. "With the D3X there's a quality level that can't be matched because of the higher dynamic range. And the colors are amazing. On another camera, if a guy was wearing a white shirt, it would just be out of there, but on this camera I can get details inside of the shirt, instead of having just plain white on there."

Snipes will use an AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED lens for many of his portraits because of what he calls the "wide look" but also because "I can get a lot of action in it."

"It's kind of like I'm shooting in two different categories. They're portraits, but they're taken in a fashion where the athletes are doing what they naturally do, working out or whatever. I try to capture them in some sort of movement."