Opening Day Is Here!

Sports Photo of the Day

Today I thought that I would honor a great tradition and talk about the opening day for Major League Baseball. This is a great day that is celebrated all across the country today. No city does it better though than Cincinnati. Until TV got its way they always played the day before the rest of the league. They have the parade that comes close to shutting down the city. They are still the only team that opens at home every year. I think that it is a great tradition that I would love to be a part of some year.

This picture was not taken on Opening Day. It was taken in June just before the start of the Civil Rights game that they hosted. The scene did have an Opening Day feel to it though so it get to be on the site today. A side note about the picture is that this was the first picture of mine that was published. The group that flew over the stadium used it in their newsletter. I think that I was very lucky here as the planes appeared in the right location so that I could have them both in the sky and on the jumbotron. My lucky seat location helped me out quite a bit here.

Technical Data

This was a picture that I wanted to get right without the help of a preset. I spent a lot of time working on this photo using the sliders in Lightroom. I ended up performing a small crop, and then sending the photo to Topaz Adjust. I used the dramatic filter to get the look that I wanted. I then brought the photo back into Lightroom to finish things up. I brought back as much of the shadow detail as I could so that the field was not totally dark. The late afternoon shadows really were killing me. I also upped the vibrance a bit so that the red would stand out a bit more. I really like this picture, and I am glad that nearly three years after taking it I can show it off on this blog.