Friday, February 24, 2006

Our little slugger



Mallory had her inaugural softball game tonight. Although she was hoping for another rain-out, once she got dressed and actually on the field, her spirits seemed lifted and she was more excited about the game. She actually hit the ball, got on base twice, and scored 2 runs! We were proud. The first game actually had to go into an extra inning, because the two teams were tied. We ended up losing 14-18, but I thought for their first effort they did pretty good.

I had to laugh, though. Her fielding reminded me of the Little Golden Book story "Tootle" I used to love as a child. You know the one... about the train who didn't want to stay on the track, but instead ran into the fields to play in the buttercups? Here's my favorite shot of the evening:


And I must take a moment to talk about my photos. Ugg. I haven't been so disatisfied and disappointed about the quality of my work in a long time. The low light/zoom lens/action shot mix was NOT a good one for me. I had many blurry pictures. And how are you supposed to get any good shots through the fence? I can see I have a lot of learning to do in this new genre of photographs. One thing's for sure. With the way her schedule is set up, I'll have PLENTY of time to practice. =)

2 comments:

Teresa said...

I love it, okay about shooting ball games. I have experience here. To shoot through the fence, you can not be shy, you have to go up to the fence and place your lens in a way that you shoot through one of the openings. If you have a lens hood, you can even rest the lens hood on the fence to stabilize yourself. If you have enough light go for the longer lens, higher shutter speed and aperture of at least 5.6 or higher. It just depends on your goal. If you want to capture movement slow down your shutter. But if you want stop action, bump that sucker up. I use about 1/500 on a nice sunny day and my aperture is usually around 7.1 - 8.0. I am usually not trying to get a really good DOF, I am just trying to get the action. Hope this all makes sense. Maybe you already know this stuff. The biggest thing is not to have any fear and get in there.

EMWilkinson said...

I love this too! Sydney's idea of playing softball was picking the grass/flowers out in the field or messing with the chalk lines so much that she had ghost hands!! That's one reason we took a break this year from it. Maybe we'll be back for Fall ball!! Too bad...they could have been on the same team...Syd was on the bears last year though. Oh...and yes...you NEED to shoot through the fence...or if you have a great zoom...go around past the dugouts...and get some kind of stool to shoot from over the side of the fence.