The Catch II
Following up on yesterday’s post, how great is the look of surprise on this young athlete’s face?
The Catch
The difference between making the catch and not making the catch doesn’t matter – it all goes down the same in the box score.
Gunned Down at the Plate
It’s rare to see a real play at the plate in 9 year old Baseball, and even rarer to see them get the out!
The Moment Before Impact
What do you think goes through a six year-old hitter’s mind right before the ball hits the bat? Is he worried about whether he will make contact, where the ball will go, or what to do next? Is he running to first in his head?
Or are the team parents more worried, and it’s just a simple reaction to him?
Baseball Portraits
How do you make your 6 Year Old look like a star for his Baseball Portrait? Move beyond basic poses and spend more time in the portrait session than what a photo shoot with hundreds of kids allows.
During Spring break, my Son Aidan and I did some portraits in the setting sun at Midway Park.
Back Outdoors!
Last week was not only the official start of Spring, but was also what I mark Spring with: returning to Outdoors sports after several months of indoor sports. My first assignment this spring was back to Greater Atlanta Christian School to photograph a Boys’ and Girls’ Soccer doubleheader.
Boys Slam it Home
Following right behind the path the Varsity Girls had blazed, the Boys stormed out quickly to a big lead against 6-AA Avondale and won 93-35.
Girls Basketball: Off and Running
Friday night Greater Atlanta Christian hosted regional opponent Avondale High School for a Region 6 AA match up. From the first tip, Greater Atlanta Christian started the game with the normal press defense and quickly mounted a big lead. By the half, GAC was leading 51-6.
Finding Artistry in the Pool
In my second outing for swimming this year, I wanted to find some of the beauty of the sport.
In this example, I used the 300mm lens. At the right distance, it compresses items and makes them appear closer together – in this case, making the lane dividers appear stacked.
Getting Sideways
So much time in sports is spent photographing subjects vertically. There’s good reason for it – the subjects in sports spend a lot of time running, and in some sports are using their feet. In football, however, there’s a lot of action that happens only from the waist up – so in my mind it makes great sense turn the camera back to horizontal and shoot very tight on the upper bodies of players on opposite sides of the ball.
In this case, the wider view (horizontally) allowed me to see the defender trying to wrap up the ball carrier – where as a vertical of this shot, from the same position on the field would have lost the contact except for part of either.
Four Looks for Swim
Swimming is a challenging sport to cover. Held indoors under usually dim lighting, with the added difficulty of constant splashing, the photographer is challenged to find the swimmer’s face and freeze the motion. The photographer needs to think more conceptually in some cases to find the best images. The techniques can vary based on stroke.
Backstroke: Waiting for the start
Backstroke actually has an advantage in the pool – the swimmer is face up, with light falling directly on their face and usually swimming at a slower pace. However, a great photograph can be found at the start – with the swimmers anticipating the start. There’s great repetition that helps frame and isolate my subject.
Forward Motion
Football, like all other sports, is about bodies in motion. However, Sports Photography in many cases is about freezing a moment of that motion crisply. In some cases though, the motion of the athlete still comes through in the frame.
The Eyes Have It
I’ve always thought the eyes were very important in any sports image – it gives the best view of what is going on in the mind of the athlete. It’s why the photographs with the greatest impact always seem to have compelling eye contact with the subject.
The Big Catch
“Football is an incredible game. Sometimes it’s so incredible, it’s unbelievable.” – Tom Landry
How often do you see an over the shoulder catch of a downfield pass in a sixth grade football game?
Tools of the Trade: The Resolving Power of the 300/f2.8
My most commonly used lens for field sports is Canon’s 300mm f2.8 L-series lens. It’s white, a little more than a foot long including lens hood and the lens has a diameter of five inches.
The question I’m most frequently asked: How far can you see with that? How far isn’t always the most of the important aspect of this lens (there are many 300mm lenses on the market) but how clearly I can see it.
I was reminded of this while sorting Saturday’s photos from Forsyth County Youth Football. This frame is only slightly cropped, but is taken with a teleconverter that extends the lens to 420mm:
The amazing part being that my subject is running past me, and I can practically count his eyelashes:
It reminds me of the wasp that I saw from behind first base last spring at a softball game – that was buzzing the hitter:
Yes, those are the legs of the wasp hanging!
Working the Backlight
I recently heard a parent at a soccer game talk about preferring to photograph only when the sun was to his back – and in the faces of the players. While there are certainly advantages to using a light source to the front of your subjects, a backlit situation is still manageable and can even be advantageous.
Let’s start by defining a backlit situation: it is one where the primary light source is behind your subject, putting your subject’s face and front of their body in a shadow (cast by their own body).
On the Line
The offensive and defensive lines in football: None of the glory of the ball carriers, but lots of hard work and contact!
Ready for attack!
In the midst of battle individually…
And as a team, the chaos of the battle.
Giving the Stiff Arm
When the lone tackler comes calling – the runner responds with a stiff arm!
And the tackler has his own response!
Warm Ups are For Photographers, Too
This time of year, I make it a point to reach the field early for high school games to catch as much of the pre-game warm ups as possible. With sunsets around 7:20 PM this past week, getting to the field early meant catching the last rays of daylight (although cloud cover late Friday meant less sunlight than expected).
Warm-ups give me an opportunity to get pictures of players who may not see as much playing time, or whose positions are more difficult to get clear shots of in action – like receivers.
Close Calls
Passing doesn’t happen much in youth football. When it does, the receivers and cornerbacks battle it out for the ball and give everything to try to make the catch.
And even after the first tip, the players still try and make the catch (check out the wide open eyes on the fallen Sharon Springs player in the white jersey):
Like a Heat Wave
With Forsyth County installing artificial turf (the Sprint Turf type) type last winter on the main playing field at Midway Park, I’ve been introduced to the joys of artificial turf on a regular basis. It has been an increasing presence at the High School level over the past several years in metro Atlanta, with my first exposure to it at St. Pius X and Dekalb County’s Halliford Stadium.
The park’s fields have heavy usage during the fall – Football practice five days a week and football games Saturday from 9 AM to 5 PM everyday. With Atlanta’s water usage restrictions and a county parks budget, they stand little chance of surviving deep into the season.
The Sprint Turf variety of artificial turf is more like regular grass than the old Astroturf. It has a longer, grass like fiber and is filled in with rubber “dirt” that helps make for a more cushioned, bouncy surface. The downside to the surface is the magnification of the heat level at the field surface level, which for Georgia in August and early September is significant.
For a photographer, it means several things:
- Extreme dehydration from sitting in the sun, on the turf’s surface. The actual surface of the field measured in excess of one-hundred degrees in the sun.
- Heat waves in the photos.
Keeping it Clean
One of the challenges with High School Sports, and especially indoors ones – is keeping the background of the photo clean. A clean background, with minimal distractions helps ensure the viewer will quickly focus on the subject of the photo. Photographers have several tools at their disposal to help ensure a clean background.
Greater Atlanta Christian School’s Long Forum is now playing host to their Volleyball squad as well. The Lady Spartans faced off against Wesleyan last week in what has traditionally been a great match up of two very good volleyball squads. It’s a superb facility for a number of reasons – but for purposes of keeping clean backgrounds, the black seating (when empty) does a great job of helping to isolate the athletes jersey colors from the background (black uniforms not withstanding as you will see.)
Football on a Smaller Scale
Following up my photography at the Lanier Bowl last fall, I’ve been invited to photograph games at Midway Park in Forsyth County. The Midway Wolverines, formerly the Midway Packers, is the largest football organization in Forsyth County and has proven to be highly successful. The name change occurred earlier this year to align the park with the local High School, West Forsyth High School.
The game is still played the same at the younger level as it is at High School, but the ratio of equipment to player mass is a lot different at the youth level. At the Kindergarten-First grade level, the kids are just beginning to learn to tackle and what’s needed to take down an opponent.
