The Good Fight

Photo of the Day

Yesterday I shot my last Purdue Soccer game of the season. It does not seem that long ago that I saw the friendly against Louisville on the schedule and decided to shoot it. I have not shot all of the home games this season, but I have shot many. The end of this season did not turn out as the Boilers hoped that it would. A narrow loss on senior day hurts as well. Hadley Stuart (23) was one of the first players that I made a good picture of this season. For some reason when she had the ball good things would usually happen. It is only fitting that on her senior day that she was part of my take as well. Here she is seen fighting for the ball with Elle Dykema (10) of Minnesota. I love pictures with the feet off of the ground, and here a couple of toes are all that are on the ground. My favorite shots during a match are the ones where the players are hand fighting for position. If I can get the players in the air while doing that it is a plus for sure. I learned a lot this soccer season going from a novice who knew nothing about the game to actually enjoying watching the sport. I hope that my interest in it helps me make some nice pictures next season.

Some of the other pictures that I liked from the day can be found on my Facebook page here.

Technical Data

The first piece of data here is that I was shooting into the sun. Normally I shoot sports in aperture priority mode. Today with a clear sky I switched over to manual to keep the shadows down on the faces of the players. I find that when the subject is backlit I really need to expose for the face and then bring in the highlights later in Lightroom. I set up my camera a bit overexposed knowing that the highlight slider in Lightroom is pretty powerful. I love shooting backlit because every stray hair and stray piece of grass shows up. If I have a choice during a match like this I will always take the light at the players back. For some reason the pictures seem to pop that much more to me.