Baseball Photography
Spring sports are officially in full swing and that means baseball is back! I absolutely love photographing baseball, is one of the few sports where I can really take my time to get unique shots. I always photograph warm ups - no matter what sport, warm ups are the time to get shots I wouldn’t necessarily get in a game. Personally, I love wide shots. Any chance I get to use my 14mm 2.8 (one of the few autofocus verisons) I do it. I also like my 24-105 F4 shooting at 24. Below are some of my favorite wides.
All of the images above are photographed at 24mm or wider. My approach always when shooting wide is to get down low for shot. The wide angles allows for the subject to look “hero” like, which is a very appealing angle for sports photos. If you notice the sequence of images vary. Some photos are taken from above which I don’t get the chance to shoot straight down too often. The way the dug out is structured, I can sit on the roof and hang over the top to get that downward angle.
A lot of new photographers SLEEP on wide shots. Every time I have an event that I am photographing I always get wide, medium, and tight shots. It simply is not all about the action - although some may disagree. Telling the story is the most important part of photography and I always keep that in the back of my mind when shooting.
Settings, this may vary as well. On a bright sunny day, I am at a minimum of 1/2000 for my shutter. However low my aperture can go whether is 2.8 or 4 that is where I will be. My ISO I leave in auto ONLY ON SUNNY DAYS! If it is cloudy or dark, I am usually around 400iso. If you are shooting a night game, my settings depending on how the lighting is around 1/1000 or 1/1250, 2.8 at 5,000-6400 iso.
Although this is basic action photo, the angle that I’m at I am actually shooting through the fence. I am in the dug out once again, shooting through the fence within the dug out from the ground level, because the dug out is sunken into the ground, there are three or four steps down the bottom of the dugout which is how I was able to get a shot from the front. For this photo, I was zoomed in using my 70-200 all the way zoomed to 200. This is at peak action as the pitcher is in full motion.
