Major League Baseball, my late season heroes and villains

As Major League Baseball heads into the post-season, and I put down my final thoughts from the 2012 regular season games, I’ll take a look back at the last few games I covered and why a few teams, players and coaches are either heroes or villains in my book.

Ah hell, who am I kidding, I am entirely convinced no one actually reads my blog, they just look at the pictures. I’d say most people’s attention span is so short that if there are more than a few sentences most people just tune out and move on. At any rate most of my visitors come from Google Image Search anyway, and I assume they are just looking free photos so who cares what I write about in this blog post anyway.

I don’t understand how someone can post six random lines of text and a stolen photo from Flickr and get 135 “likes” whereas I can spend hours writing what I think is very well thought out information and post more than ten unique photos that I captured and get two “likes” and one of those is from some “online Viagra pills” spammer . . .

Oh well, on with the photos.

Cincinnati Reds Manager Dusty Baker: Hero

Dusty Baker used to be with the San Francisco Giants and I was always a Giants fan, and to top it off he seems to be a genuinely nice guy.

Click on the “continue reading” link below to see the rest of my Heroes and Villains.

2012 Phoenix Arizona High School Baseball — some shots I thought you might like.

High school baseball season has long since finished, at least around here because of the heat, but I thought you needed a little reminder and review of some of the images I captured during the season. These images are from the Mountain Ridge Mountain Lions at the North Canyon Rattlers game or from the O’Connor High School Eagles at the Pinnacle Pioneers game.

I can’t tell you how great these images look printed large as 12 x 18 inch prints, you really can see the detail and the colors really “pop” so make sure you order your big prints before you get all caught up in football. Cheers, I hope you enjoy these.

The Mountain Ridge Mountain Lions pitcher on the mound against the North Canyon Rattlers. Unfortunately for me a lot of the teams don’t put numbers on the front of their jerseys and identifying the players can either be a challenge or next to impossible unless you take the time to either tag each image with audio, (a feature some Canon camera’s have) or make sure to get a shot of the player’s jersey number either before or after your sequence. Sadly I didn’t do either one, so I can’t identify some of the players in my images.

To see more images from the Arizona high school baseball season, click the “continue reading” link below.

2012 MLB Spring Training from Arizona

Baseball is almost a religion for a great many people, and I’m sorry but I just don’t understand it. There, I said it. I just don’t get it. Sure I love baseball, I just don’t make it my religion.

As a kid growing up in Oakland California I can remember a nice old man who lived next door who would sit in his backyard during those warm summer days and listen to the Oakland Athletics baseball games on the radio. I would hear the sounds of the game on the radio drifting over the fence and when I am covering a spring training game I am reminded of my childhood and the warm summer days hearing A’s baseball on the radio.

I love to cover spring training games because the atmosphere is so relaxed and both the fans and the players just seem to be having fun. You also get to see the young upstart players and the iconic players get out there and enjoy the game of baseball before the long season begins.

Let’s start the show with some pitcher images.

MAR 14 2012: San Francisco Giants pitcher Brian Wilson (38) on the mound during a MLB Spring Training game against the Cleveland Indians at Scottsdale Stadium in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Brian ‘fear the beard’ Wilson takes the mound during a San Francisco Giants game.

To see more spring training baseball click the more link below:

MLB – Chasing the light, the heart of darkness and trying to improve my baseball photography

Photographing Major League Baseball in Phoenix can be a bit of a challenge, you only get a few “hat trick” games per season. What I mean by “hat trick” is a day game, with the roof of our stadium open and the home team in their red uniforms. More often than not our games start at 6:40 PM and the roof is closed which can put you at 2000 and up for ISO, and that doesn’t always make the best images.

I don’t want this to sound like I’m complaining, just that capturing good clean images that photo buyers are looking for can be a bit of a challenge. I try to face those challenges head-on, but at times I am not up to the task. Every game and every team has a different personality to it and you try to do the best you can with the given conditions.

Here is a look at a few of my favorite images so far this season, and some of my epic fail shots as well. I’ll leave it up to you to determine which shots are winners and which shots are headed for the fail bin.

I liked this shot of Arizona Diamondbacks Justin Upton (10) at the plate because it was one of those rare “hat trick” games. I think I should have given this shot a little bit more head-room and the lighting is somewhat harsh, but overall I liked it because you get to see his eyes and the entire bat at the end of his follow-through.

To see more great baseball images, click the more link below.

Thoughts on seeing the value of a photograph . . .

This is a bit of a philosophical post, and to some degree a bit of a rant so if you just want to look at pictures you should stop reading now.

There are times when people see my photographs and say, “hey those are cool pictures, email me copies” or “can you send me those” and sadly I have to respond and decline their “free picture” requests. Many people don’t understand the reasons why I would rather not give away free pictures and I believe this lack-of-understanding may be because they don’t see the value of a photograph.

We all have those snapshots from our childhood that bring back the memories of a simple time in our lives, memories of happiness, joy or excitement and thrill. Depending on your age, the camera many of those snapshots were taken with wasn’t very expensive so the argument about using expensive camera gear to capture those photographs isn’t a factor here.

I get that there is a possibility that you don’t like the photograph. If it’s not your favorite pose or you are making a funny face or for whatever reason you just don’t like the photograph, I have no problem with you not liking a photograph, and therefore not being interested in purchasing it. I can understand that reasoning, and can not disagree with someone’s aesthetic judgment.

Read more about the value of a photograph by clicking on the more link below.

MLB Extra Innings, uh I mean extra images . . .

I haven’t been real excited about my skills shooting football lately so I thought I’d go back and take a look at some of the last few baseball games. Maybe get some inspiration back.

So, how about some baseball? I was having fun with my watermark on a few of these, I hope you like them.

I love the reaction on San Francisco Giants Cody Ross (13) face as he reacts to being hit by a pitch at the plate. The expression on his face is what makes this image for me, sure it would be a better image if you could see the ball hitting his arm, but I just didn’t time it right and his expression and the ball are not in the same frame.

See more by clicking on the more link.

What this blog needs is more Major League Baseball . . .

I don’t know if this blog needs more baseball or not, but I will post some baseball images because that is what I have been shooting these days. I’ve been shooting a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t fit into nice neat little categories so for this post I’ll offer up some baseball.

The local team in not doing so well in the standings and that means the fans haven’t been attending games, maybe this will help.

06 July 2010: Chicago Cubs pitcher Ted Lilly (30) during warmup before a regular season game between the Chicago Cubs and the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona. The Cubs defeated the Diamondbacks 6-4 in 9 innings.

See more images by clicking on the more link.

Arizona Diamondbacks baseball

I wanted to put something else up on my blog, and I really didn’t know what it should be, so I decided to put up a few baseball shots. Sometimes, as a photographer I feel that I am lacking in creative inspiration. I suck, or I’m not meeting my own goals that I have set for myself, or I’m just down on things. I guess I’m in one of my moods today. Maybe some nice baseball shots will cheer me up. (now with AP style captions and more “baseball-ness”)

13 June 2010: Arizona Diamondbacks starting pitcher Edwin Jackson on the mound during a regular season game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona. The Diamondbacks defeated the Cardinals 7-5 in 9 innings.

See more after the jump . . .

Some of my favorite baseball images

I wanted to put up some more baseball images for your viewing pleasure.

Just love the large field of green in this one.

Click the link to see more images.