Memories of the Mick

Photo of the Day

This past weekend was spent shooting some baseball games, and otherwise enjoying the beautiful weather. I have been having a great time picking up a few new things here and there while getting some great access to Purdue baseball. I have been sending some of my selects to Purdue so that they can be used on their website. As that has happened I have posted less of my photos on my websites or social media because they are on the Purdue Website. If you want to view the images click here to see the photo galleries. I really like the image above, but I would never send it in to Purdue because the Purdue player in it is shown in a bad light. That is why I like it so much though. Purdue Junior Conner Hudnall just took a huge cut at a pitch. As I watched it in my viewfinder I thought of Mickey Mantle. This wasn’t the screw yourself into the ground kind of swing that the Mick took, but it was a huge one. With Mickey some of the photos that I liked so much are the pictures that show him failing. Maybe that is because he succeeded so much you wanted to see the other side. One image that comes to mind right away is the picture of Mickey tossing his batting helmet that was in the July 30, 1965 issue of Life magazine. It is an iconic shot, but doesn’t show the subject in a good light.

It has been fun really trying to capture the moment over the past couple of weeks at these games. I do not have a sports camera that shoots 14 frames a second. Mine shoots four. In that second many things can happen. I have really relied on timing to get the shot that I wanted. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not. I also have ditched the 1.4x tele that I was using early in the season. I took it off Friday as the sun faded, and I liked the look of my images. I am not sure that it made a difference, but in my mind I think that it did. I just have to know my limitations without it. I have been using my feet a bit more to zoom instead of the lens. That being said I know that the outfield is pretty much beyond me. That is why you see my images show the infield only.

Technical Data

This was a very easy shot to edit. When I am importing my images into Lightroom from the Purdue games I automatically apply my Baseball Day preset that I created last week. It is a take on a preset that I have used often by Matt Kloskowski, but I changed it a bit to suit my taste. From there I performed a small crop and an exposure and temperature adjustment. That is all that was done here. I like the way that I have made my baseball images a bit easier to edit in Lightroom.