C&C Please?

jbr13

Any thoughts?

MichaelKirk

Opinion
Need to crop tighter - too much space around the "action" part of the photo.

No ball - really need to try and get the ball in the picture to make it something above and beyound a "snap shot" type photo.

Backgrounds - way too cluttered. Probably not much you could do here based on what I see. But you need to try and shot from angles where the background are cleaner or really stop down on your lens to blur the background more.

and did I mention you need to crop tighter!

Michael
www.MLKimages.com

wxwax

Your exposures look excellent.

I agree with the above.

Too loose, by a long shot. Look at piccies in the paper or Sports Illustrated ( or www.CNNSI.com) - usually very tight.

Need smaller aperature, depth of field too deep, backgrounds extremely distracting.

Eyes closed on the first guy.

But you have good timing, the moments you chose to show us are good ones.

More!

wxwax

BTW, while I know the ball thing is huge, I see tons and tons of reax shots and other no-ball shots in mags, paper etc. I never seem to think of shooting reax, I'm always going for the action. But the pros don't seem to agree me.

winger

wxwax wrote:

Your exposures look excellent.

I agree with the above.

Too loose, by a long shot. Look at piccies in the paper or Sports Illustrated ( or www.CNNSI.com) - usually very tight.

Need smaller aperature, depth of field too deep, backgrounds extremely distracting.

Eyes closed on the first guy.

But you have good timing, the moments you chose to show us are good ones.

More!

Yeah I would have to agree. The exposure is great and for most people that is the hardest part, now you just need to figure out where to stand.

Baseball is tough to shoot tight if you dont have the equipment. I find I can cover way more of softball with my 70-200 than basebal because the basepath is simply larger.

That being said the ideas, keep it tight and watch the backgrounds are proably the two biggest ideas to improve you photos. Also faces, there will be times when its ok not to see a players face but faces will draw you in to the emotion involved in the game.

Think about drawing your readers in.

If the field you are shooting at has a chain link fence for the backstop you should have no problem getting photos like these for baseball with an equivallent lens to what I have.



Keep on shooting, I find i get better each time I go out, and sometimes by shooting new sports you learn even more, you can bring in what you learned from your favorite sports, plus you may have to try something new when you encounter a new sport.

Oh my other big piece of advice, dont chimp on the field. I am looking to make sure you are taking good photos is ok, and seeing if you get a good play. But really your camera should be up most of the time. You can get alot of good reaction shots and other stuff in between the play, and it will make the difference between a good photograhper and a great one.

I have only been shooting since 2004 and I was just looking back at my first set of hockey photos. Man have I come far!

jbr13

Thanks WInger, I really like this site for all the great people and info. Compared to other sites were there seems to be a bunch of BS, this is a much more resepctful and helpful forum. Thanks again to everyone!

Jason

winger wrote:

Yeah I would have to agree. The exposure is great and for most people that is the hardest part, now you just need to figure out where to stand.

Baseball is tough to shoot tight if you dont have the equipment. I find I can cover way more of softball with my 70-200 than basebal because the basepath is simply larger.

That being said the ideas, keep it tight and watch the backgrounds are proably the two biggest ideas to improve you photos. Also faces, there will be times when its ok not to see a players face but faces will draw you in to the emotion involved in the game.

Think about drawing your readers in.

If the field you are shooting at has a chain link fence for the backstop you should have no problem getting photos like these for baseball with an equivallent lens to what I have.



Keep on shooting, I find i get better each time I go out, and sometimes by shooting new sports you learn even more, you can bring in what you learned from your favorite sports, plus you may have to try something new when you encounter a new sport.

Oh my other big piece of advice, dont chimp on the field. I am looking to make sure you are taking good photos is ok, and seeing if you get a good play. But really your camera should be up most of the time. You can get alot of good reaction shots and other stuff in between the play, and it will make the difference between a good photograhper and a great one.

I have only been shooting since 2004 and I was just looking back at my first set of hockey photos. Man have I come far!

apiercy

MichaelKirk wrote:

Need to crop tighter - too much space around the "action" part of the photo.

No ball - really need to try and get the ball in the picture to make it something above and beyound a "snap shot" type photo.

Backgrounds - way too cluttered. Probably not much you could do here based on what I see. But you need to try and shot from angles where the background are cleaner or really stop down on your lens to blur the background more.

and did I mention you need to crop tighter!

Michael
www.MLKimages.com

I agree. I think these are the most important things when shooting sports. Faces - faces - faces! It really shows the emotion of the players. I always try to get the ball in the photos if possible, too. I would also crop in closer.

The lighting in your photos is great. Sometimes lighting is a major problem for me during baseball and softball because they are played outside and you never know where the sun is going to be.

-Anthony