Back On The Diamond!

It had been 526 days since I last photographed a baseball game. That was a fall ball practice game. If you want to talk an actual baseball game I went 598 days in between live baseball games. That is way too long. Last fall I saw a high school fall ball practice on my way to photograph soccer and I almost asked if I could photograph it. I thought it was way too long in between games last spring before things were cancelled. Add an extra year to that and it became way too long. This whole week leading up to the first games felt like Christmas week when I was a kid. I had nights where I was not sleeping because I was thinking about that first game. The night before I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited. I ended up putting on the Ken Burns baseball documentary and got a couple of episodes in before I finally fell asleep. This has been way too long coming, and the next game cannot come soon enough.

Guessing Right

Part of the fun of photographing baseball is trying to guess right on which fielder it will be hit to. So much factors in to where the ball can go that it is a crazy game to try and do. When you guess the right fielder though there is no better feeling. You are in on the play right away. One of my goals this year is to get the diving infield play. Hopefully I can get that sooner rather than later.

Working For My Multi-Exposure

For some reason I have always thought that baseball and multiple exposures work well together. You have my way overused version to show the pitching motion as well as a few other ways to make use of it. For some reason Sony cameras do not have a multi-exposure feature in them. This means that I have to do it in post. That is okay, but that is more time spent after the game editing. The beauty about doing it in camera is that it is done right then. I really wish that Sony would figure this out and put the feature in my camera with an update.

The Sony 200-600mm Lens

I bought the 200-600mm lens with baseball and softball in mind. You have a lot of reach at 600mm for plays in the outfield and at 200mm you can still make photos closer to you. It really could be the perfect lens. Yesterday I started the game off with the 1.4x tele on to get even closer to the action. With the extender it makes the lens a 280mm-840mm lens. The light wasn’t great though so I quickly took the extender off of the camera. As a light drizzle started near the end of the game the f/6.3 wasn’t letting in enough light near the end of the game as well. For the next couple of games though light should not be a problem so this thing should get a lot of use. I really liked how it worked for game one.

Selfie Time

After Ryan Lasko hit his second bomb of the game he took an imaginary selfie with some of his teammates in front of the dugout. The beauty of the 200mm-600mm lens was that I could quickly rack in to 200mm to get as many of the players as I could in my photo. They were pretty close to me, but I thought that I got enough in the frame to make a nice picture.

A Different Action Picture

I love this kind of picture. You have the ball being hit with the fielder watching to see where it will go. If the sun would have been out you would have had the fielder in the sun and the batter in the shade which is even better. It is still a fun way to mix up the gallery a little.

More Photos From The Game

Below are a few bonus photos that I liked from the game on Friday night. Over the course of the next few days I will have a lot more baseball photos for the blog I am sure.