Last Soccer Pics Of The Season

vt1122

A few shots from the Seaside Rhode Island tournament.
Comments welcome. If anyone has any input as to how these could have been shot or proccessed better it would be appreciated. Always trying to learn and improve.

1



2



3



4



5



6



7



8



and one of the coach when he's not happy with a call.

vt1122

Anyone?

Frog Lady

hiya David,

1st off, you've got a good eye for action - I like a lot of what I see.

things to think about between seasons: shoot tight, crop tighter . IMHO, many of your shots could greatly stand to be cropped, focusing in on the player(s) more. I would bet, if you're taking a lot of pictures, that most of them won't be printed at much more than 4x6, so you could probably even crop most of the excess (i.e., non-involved players) in #3 to really focus the viewers attention on the player with the ball. Likewise #1 (and that one also seems to have the horizon off center, which is easy to fix while you're cropping). The rest are better, but again, I believe would be improved w/ a bit more cropping.

One other thing to think about is your exposure. It looks like the sun was in front of you (behing the players) in the 1st couple of pics, so that their faces are in shadow. Coupled w/ their white jerseys. their faces are underexposed. Have you tried upping the exposure compensation? I typically use any where from +1/3 to +1 and that helps. After the fact (remembering that in camera fixes are best), you could also use some PP. In PS CS2, there is the shadow/highlight option under image adjustment. If I remember right, there is an adjustment called fill flash in PS Elements. Play w/ those and see if that helps bring up the exposure on the faces.

hth,

C.

vt1122

Thx Colleen,

I'm still trying to figure out how much can be cropped and still get decent picture quality. Are there any rules of thumb? Shots 1 & 2 I actually shot at -2/3, I guess I still worry to much about blowing out the highlights (shoulders on white jerseys). I agree the horizon is off in shot #1 but the players and ball seem to be perfectly vertical, which is better? I'll try working on a couple of these later and repost to see if they improve.

vt1122

A couple redo's

PhotoHound

Colleen is right on with her eval. Very good action/portrait shots, of which #'s 2, 4, 7, and 8 are the best. It does look like you could up your shutter speed, to reduce the motion blur (like in #6). Sometimes motion blur can look really good, but for the most part it just diminishes the shot. You didn't have much light in the first bunch, but increasing your ISO would help. You could also play with the exposure more; the colors in #1-6 look quite washed out. A couple of your new crops might be a bit too tight (header w/#32)... Not a bad series though, good job.

vt1122

PhotoHound wrote:

Colleen is right on with her eval. Very good action/portrait shots, of which #'s 2, 4, 7, and 8 are the best. It does look like you could up your shutter speed, to reduce the motion blur (like in #6). Sometimes motion blur can look really good, but for the most part it just diminishes the shot. You didn't have much light in the first bunch, but increasing your ISO would help. You could also play with the exposure more; the colors in #1-6 look quite washed out. A couple of your new crops might be a bit too tight (header w/#32)... Not a bad series though, good job.

3,4,5&6 were shot during the last game of the day, 7:15 to 8:30. ISO was set at 800. Shutter speeds were over 1/1000 when the game started but by the end of the game some were as low as 1/160 depending on the background. I should have upped the ISO even further as the game progressed. Surprisingly even at those slow shutter speeds most pics came out reasonably well.