Pushing Forward

Photo of the Day

Yesterday I attended the first Purdue sporting event of the season. It was a friendly soccer match between the Boilermakers and Louisville. I really do not have the knowledge of soccer as I do most sports that I shoot. I have been watching a lot of soccer lately though to get a better understanding of it. With my equipment soccer is a lot about luck. If the girls are going to be on the other end of the field most of the time I am out of luck. In the first half luck was on my side, and Purdue seemed to want to play right in front of me. I took many shots on the day, and you can see my favorites here. I think that I liked this one of Alex Hairston the best though because it has a few nice qualities to it. First of all you have the situation. Alex was in the air because her cleat was just slid into. Jumping was a survival technique. She got away from the defender to push the ball forward. The fact that both feet are in the air also was appealing to me here. During the week I watched a critique given by Sports Illustrated photographer Peter Read Miller on sports photos. He kept talking about how he loved the shots with both feet in the air. It is a great way to show motion. The turf coming up is also a nice touch that I like. When I left the soccer field I didn’t think that I had many good shots. The action is so fast that you have to anticipate for the most part. I was surprised at how I did when I saw my images. I have a long way to go as far as soccer is concerned, but I like where I am headed.

Technical Data

Here I used a preset that I created during the baseball season to help speed up the editing process. I created a Lightroom preset called baseball (day) for when the sun is at its peak. It was a quick way for me to combat the issues that the high sun presents. It seemed to work well here as well, but with just a couple of tweaks. If I shoot many more matches in this light I may have to come up with a soccer preset as well.