Double Play - the hard way!

sportshound

In my son's game last Sunday (7/6), the opposing team had the bases loaded against them with 1 out. As expected, they were hoping for a ground ball to turn a double play and get out of the inning. They got their wish but the turn of the play was a bit more difficult than expected. The ball went to third, who threw it home for the force there (my son is the catcher), he then fired it to first but the hitter was pretty fast and was safe. The runner at third was headed for home during this and the 1st baseman threw it back home for the tag out at the plate. I think I got a nice sequence of the process, especially the tag at the plate. Check out my son's shin guard in the last shot - the runner's cleats cut completely through them!

Any and all comments are welcome as usual.


1st out at home.


Safe at 1st.

and now the play at the plate........



and show him the ball!!

Here's the shin guard......it's a good thing someone invented plastic.

johng

You need to frame much, much tighter. You've got way too much dead space in the shots and also, as a result, inacurate focus and detail. #3 would be the keeper out of the series, but the runner is not in sharp enough focus or detail.
If you're going to frame landscape, your subject should fill 80-90% of the vertical frame (or 2/3 of the vertical frame for a slide, etc). If shooting Portrait, your subject should fill 2/3 of the vertical frame.

In addition to getting better focus and detail, framing tightly helps reduce ugly backgrounds we all have to deal with at these sports venues.

Unfortunately for baseball that often requires long lenses. How long depends on where you are forced to shoot from. In your profile I see a 200mm lens. IMO, the working limit of such a lens is about 75 feet - maybe a bit longer with the new crop of pro grade DSLRs but not much.

As an illustration, here's a play at 2nd base from a softball game. Similar enough to demonstrate my point about framing tight and retaining detail (in this case my subject was the shortstop). I dont post this to steal your thread, only to illustrate my point: