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.

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.

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.

Major League Baseball and Chase Field in Phoenix Arizona

I wanted to show my diversity and let you know that I enjoy shooting a large variety of different types of subjects. I love baseball, mostly because it is played at a different pace than most other sports and although it is a team sport the focus is always on an individual, like the pitcher, or batter or runner.

When you shoot a baseball game you can always count on needing to be at the ballpark at least two hours before the game, and most games are three-plus hours long, so you can expect a very long day.

With Chase Field if the roof is closed you will struggle with lighting issues, I don’t care how much f2.8 glass you bring you will be pushing the ISOs to get your shutter speeds high enough to stop the action, that is just the way it is and you know that before you even get to the ballpark.

Chase Field is a great facility and tons of fun to shoot there, at times a real challenge, but always fun.

Read the rest of the story by clicking on the “more” link below.

How about some bright sunny outdoor sports? Major League Baseball Spring Training

The last few things I have shot have been basketball and hockey, both indoor sports so having the opportunity to shoot spring training baseball sounded like a lot of fun to me.

I love shooting when there is lots of light, sometimes shooting in the mid-day harsh sun is not always the best, but it sure beats shooting in dark indoor arenas.

I’m just going to toss these images up with no captions because right now I’m feeling a bit on the lazy side.

If you love baseball as much as I do, you will click the “more” link to see the rest of the images.