Recent Lacrosse

slapshot

These are from one and two weeks ago. I have taken some DGrin advice on trying to get lower, and also not worrying about blown highlights on uniforms and helmets in an attempt to get better exposure on the faces.

We have yet to have a cloudy day at game time! Shadows continue to be a problem. The bright sunlight also makes it harder to use a wide open aperture to blur out the backgrounds. Last time I tried to shoot at f2.8 I maxed out shutter speed at 1/8000!!

Anyhow, here are the pics...

Face off




Don't look at the camera!



Gut check:



Hot potato:




Thank you, lacrosse gods:




Winding up for the shot:



Foot race:



These shots were taken with a 70-200 VR on a Nikon D70, so most are substantial crops in post, resulting in some loss of sharpness and additional noise in the dark areas. I am looking to upgrade to a longer lens.

Any thoughts/feedback are welcome. Thanks.

wxwax

I really like the last one, for me it has a story and the foreground ball gives it a lot of energy.

To deal with the overexposure problem, I tend to shoot in RAW and underexpose the shots. Then in post, I combine two exposures, and tweak with masks to get the faces and eyes bright enough.

slapshot

wxwax wrote:

I really like the last one, for me it has a story and the foreground ball gives it a lot of energy.

To deal with the overexposure problem, I tend to shoot in RAW and underexpose the shots. Then in post, I combine two exposures, and tweak with masks to get the faces and eyes bright enough.

Thanks for the comments.

How long does the two exposures/masks take you? I am trying to keep the post processing to a minimum. I am getting around 30 keeper shots per game. I do a quick crop, shadows/highlights, and I'm done. I guess it's like anything else, the results will be a function of the effort put in!

Thanks