boys' baseball (LOTS of images!)

Elaine

This was our family's first year of involvement with baseball. My husband coached and pitched; my son (7 yr old) played; I took photos of our team. Our season just ended this week, much to my son's disappointment. Here are some of my favorites...

All shot with the Canon 40D, 70-200 f/4L IS at f/4, and edited in Lightroom 2.3.

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cmkultradome

Nice pictures. You did a great job capturing their faces & emotions. #9 is really cute. I also like the portrait #12, its always tough to capture a nice picture when they are wearing all of that protective gear.

Stephanie

zack75144

yes very nice!

budman101

OMG, they all look so happy! Very nice capturing the joy of the game. My favorite is #1. I'm going to call him "Slugger". The only minor nit, on #17 loose some of the grass at the bottom.

Elaine

Thank you! I found baseball to be more challenging than soccer, to capture faces and interesting action. Every moment is different in soccer, and the action tends to be heading in one of two directions, whereas baseball has a lot of repetition, and it's hard to get into position as the action can be facing a number of directions. This baseball was so low-key that I was able to plunk myself down pretty much anywhere I wanted. By the end of the season, I was just figuring out where the good spots were.

Mike J

Hi Elaine,

Gotta ask you...which of our Oregon spring weathers did you prefer? Shooting on the sunny days or the overcast days?

#4, #8, and #9, #13 (might want to clone out the pole though). I would also try to darken the background on some of these as well.

Elaine

Mike J wrote:

Hi Elaine,

Gotta ask you...which of our Oregon spring weathers did you prefer? Shooting on the sunny days or the overcast days?

#4, #8, and #9, #13 (might want to clone out the pole though). I would also try to darken the background on some of these as well.

Hi Mike,

Well, looking back at the photos, I preferred the ones with more sun, I think. It kinda depended on which field we were at and which way it faced. I sorted through over 3000 photos and edited over 300, over a couple days in Lightroom, so things like pole cloning were not in the cards.

Mike J

Elaine wrote:

Hi Mike,

Well, looking back at the photos, I preferred the ones with more sun, I think. It kinda depended on which field we were at and which way it faced. I sorted through over 3000 photos and edited over 300, over a couple days in Lightroom, so things like pole cloning were not in the cards.

Interesting...I preferred shooting an overcast day and not have to deal with the shadows. Overcast evenings were another matter - usually did not have enough light to shoot fash enough shutter speeds.

I know how your son feels - our 8-year old daughter played softball for the first time this year. She had a great time and was sad to see the season end. Time for summer now (and doing strawberry jam!)

Elaine

Mike J wrote:

Interesting...I preferred shooting an overcast day and not have to deal with the shadows. Overcast evenings were another matter - usually did not have enough light to shoot fash enough shutter speeds.

I know how your son feels - our 8-year old daughter played softball for the first time this year. She had a great time and was sad to see the season end. Time for summer now (and doing strawberry jam!)

I hear ya about the shadows. All our games were at 6 pm, and depending on the field, we would have sun the whole time or the field would begin to be shaded part way through (when it was sunny!). That made it a bit tougher to shoot manually...hard to keep up with the settings when going from bright sun to shade, so I used aperture priority a bit then. I think I like the idea of overcast days for shooting, but I like the drama of sun, backlight, shadows, etc... in the photos.

We've discovered an opportunity to play Fall Ball near us, and when asked if he'd rather play more baseball or play soccer, our son had zero hesitation - baseball it is! So, for now, it's on to summer swim team, and then back to baseball!

Speaking of strawberry jam...just had some homemade strawberry jam on my toast for breakfast...made last night...from Hood berries! Yuuum!

GSPeP

Nice job

#2 is great: the big coat (was it cold?), the jeans and then the helmet.

Otherwise a great job capturing the faces.

I have the same problems with shadows when I take pictures at our local baseball field. Games start at 9:30am and go on till noon. To get the best pictures of (righthanded) batters I'm facing south. Early there is shadow from trees next to the field, and later on I'm taking pictures almost against the sun. And the baseball caps are no big help either. I already notices that on several occasions the reflection of the sun on the gravel helped lighting up the faces. But that gives a slight more red.