Category Archives: Baseball

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…

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Photographing an event is great. In fact, all photography is great! I love it. I love the challenge of trying new things and trying to record the events as they happen and preserve the precious memories. This love for photography keeps me going, trying new things, and helps me keep a fresh approach to an event or photographic subject.

One problem with photography that I find is when it comes time to pick and best photos for prints or for a book there are just too many to pick from and I have to make difficult decisions. I suppose this is the struggle for any photo editor. I only taste it once in a while, but the taste is sometimes bitter for me.

I am currently working on a project of baseball photographs. I have to narrow the selection down to only seven photographs from this past year. I like to call these the best of the best. Once they are printed, these photographs will hang on a public wall for everyone to see for years to come.  So making these decisions does not come easy for me.

What makes for a good photograph?

Of course, I closely study the focus to be sure it’s clear. I also pay particular attention to the background of the photograph, which can be extremely distracting to the main subject. But what else makes a good photograph?

Here are three photos of the many I am currently looking at for this project. Which of these three is the best? Why? How would you choose the best of these three?

Some New Baseball Photos and Still More to Come

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Late last night I posted some baseball photos from this past weekend’s ECTB Tournament. The Sunday games were rained out, but some great baseball was played on Saturday!

I photographed the 11u game first, then had the chance to photograph the two 15u games. The players were hitting and driving the ball, and the defense was solid. The 15u team won both of their games and they looked strong. It is always fun for me to photograph a baseball game but when the action on the field is played with confidence and precision, it makes it even more enjoyable!

You can see some of the photos from these three games here.

And I am posting a just a few photos here.

Selling Photographs

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I heard a very interesting podcast tonight while I was driving in my truck. That discussion revolved around the differences between the different ways to market and sell images. Mainly, they were discussing the difference between “rights managed,” and “royalty free” pricing.

Have any of you had any success selling photographs?

A majority of my photo sales are with parents who want the action images I captured in a baseball game, a school musical, or some other event. This is much different from selling photographs to magazines or other venues. I also sell wildlife and landscape photos occasionally. But I am curious to how you market and sell your photos. What works for you? Are any of you into micro-stock photography, for example, selling photos on iStockPhoto or some company like that? What works? What do you find frustrating?

More Baseball Photos

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Today I photographed three baseball games. And it was a beautiful day for baseball!

The Lehigh Valley Baseball Academy 11u team played the Titans at 9am. It was a hard-fought game that featured some solid defense and quality hits. The action was exciting throughout the game. It was obvious that these boys are being coached well and are learning the fundamentals of baseball.

I then photographed the two LVBA 15u games. This team played well, too, winning both games and moving on in the next round of the tournament as the #2 seed. The players were hitting the ball very well and exhibiting great fundamental defensive skills–they turned one double-play and made some very nice defensive plays on the field.

I am posting four photos from the 11u team here on my blog today, but you can see the photos of all the games on my website. They should be posted by tomorrow evening. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these photos.

No-Hitter Pitched for LVBA 15u

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Eli pitched a no-hitter today for the 15u Lehigh Valley Baseball Academy!

The opposing team had very few base runners during the game and Eli was in control as he struck out one batter after the other. On two occasions, he walked a couple batters in an inning but put the hammer down and pitched out of trouble. He was in command of his pitches all day and kept his focus throughout the game. Watching a 15u player throw a no-hitter was a complete joy to witness and photograph!

This was the first no-hitter that Eli pitched in his young career. The LVBA team scored one run on a wild pitch as Joey DePerno scored from third base on a heads-up play to cap off Eli’s no-hitter with a victory.

Here are a series of photos from the first inning of Eli’s no-hitter. It was a day to remember and I was glad to photograph the game as it unfolded. I always say that each game has a unique story and I see my job as trying to tell that story through the photographs I capture. Today Eli made it very easy to tell this game’s story. Awesome game Eli and congratulations on your no-hitter!

New Baseball Photographs Posted

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Sports photography is one my photo passions. I do not shoot for Sports Illustrated or ESPN the Magazine yet, but I do try to celebrate the talents of the young players who play at the Lehigh Valley Baseball Academy. Think about this. The Little League World Series is now over. We watched the games for the past three weeks on television. Local Little Leagues need to end their season in the beginning of June in order to pick their All-Star teams and have enough time to play the tournaments. This means that most of the Little League players complete their baseball season in the beginning of June. Only a small number of players get onto All-Star teams and once you lose; you’re season is done, too. Very few players play all summer in Little League. What happened to the days when summers were for baseball?

For better or worse, things have changed. Now the baseball craze is travel and tournament baseball. Players who play on a tournament team often play 2 to 3 games on Saturday and anywhere from 2 to 4 or even 5 games on Sunday! Tournament baseball is very different from Little League baseball. The positive part for me is that I can shoot a lot of games in a weekend–mostly Saturdays for me. This past Saturday I photographed three back-to-back games. I averaged a little over 100 good photographs for each game. I am very particular about what I think is good enough and what I post on my website to share with players, coaches, and parents. I might not be submitting photos to the big sports magazines yet, but I still demand a lot of myself and have high standards.

I pick the best photos to display on my website and then share them with the teams and families. I use a simple protection protocol with a user name and password , which I mentioned in detail a few posts ago. It is just an effort to protect the photos of the young players, while still trying to share the photos with all those who might be interested in viewing or purchasing them. I find great joy in photographing the baseball games and trying to capture the exciting action on the field. Baseball is still our great American pastime and is worthy of being preserved in photographs. Besides, who knows when one of these young ball players will make it into the Bigs!

You can view my LVBA page and if you would like to receive the user name and password to view the photos, please send me an email message. Here are just a few sample photos.


Fall Baseball

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The LVBA Fall Baseball Season started today. Several teams were active in the ECTB 5th Annual Hardball Challenge. I had the opportunity to photograph three of the games today and the action was amazing it was like watching a professional game you assist if you get red sox tickets or any other big team tickets for a game. These boys can flat-out play baseball! I was at the 9u, 11u, & 14u games.

I believe that a unique story unfolds in each game and my job is to capture the moments and turn them into memories. I will be posting photos from all three games on my website once they are edited, but I thought putting three photos up here on my blog would be a good representative of the forthcoming photos. I think you can tell from viewing these photographs that these boys mean business on the baseball diamond!


Web Galleries from Lightroom

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Continuing the theme of how I post-process photographs, I will now discuss how I use the Web Gallery Module in Lightroom to share my photos with others.

Let’s say I shoot a baseball game, which is one of my most favorite subjects. Every game has a story that unfolds and my job is to try to tell that story photographically. I also like to portray players in action, preferably with the baseball in the frame. So I get back from a shoot and select the keepers as I described on Saturday. All those that are marked “picked” will now be prepared for display on a new web page on my website. Lightroom makes this incredibly easy!

First, I go to the collection I created, that contains all the selected photos. Then I go to the Web Module. Here’s where things get fun! Let’s say I want to add the photos to my website and have them display as a slideshow with a black background. To start setting this up, I click on the already installed Lightroom Template from the left panel named “Slideshow.” Now I choose to customize this in a  number of different ways. First I setup the titles in the right panel labeled Site Info. I can change the Site Title, Collection Title, Description, Contact Info, and the Web or Mail Link. As changes are made they show up in the large preview screen.

I typically just go down the right-hand panel and make changes in this order. The next panel is the Color Palette where I can change the font color, any header or menu text, the border, and the background colors. I like to use a black background for slideshows with white text.

The Appearance Panel allows us to change the layout features such as adding an identity plate and determine the size of thumbnail and image size.

The Image Info panel gives me the opportunity to add titles and/or captions to each photo, assuming I included this information in the metadata for each photograph.

The Output Settings panel allows me to set the size and quality of the images, add watermarks, and sharpen on output.

Finally, the Upload Panel is where we can setup our ftp server information for automatic uploading. I ignore this panel and prefer to export manually because I create a username and password so that the photos of these young players are protected. This process is a topic for another discussion at a later time.

Once I make all the changes to get the web gallery just the way I want it to look, I double-check to make sure the preview is exactly as I imagined it should look. The uploading process takes some time, so I want to be sure things are correct now. Otherwise I might have to another upload, which only takes more time.

I export the newly created web gallery to my hard drive. Then I use my web design software to upload the gallery onto a new folder on my server, which is the last step in this process. You can see an example of a slideshow I created by following these directions here. A visitor to my website can scroll through each image manually one-by-one or opt to start the slideshow and have  the photos scrolled through automatically.

This is really easy to do and I use this or a similar feature after every photo shoot. Lightroom makes it very customizable and easy to do. Give it a try yourself!

Photograph the Action

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You’ve heard me say before that I love photographing baseball games. Well, today I photographed two games and the action was unbelievable!

The first game went back and forth as both teams battled it out on the field. There were several good defensive plays, some good hitting, and lots of action on the base paths. This is a sports photography dream come true! Hitting, running, sliding, tagging–these games had it all!

I enjoy the challenge of photographing the action. This is no easy task. Just when you think you’ve got your camera pointed in the right direction at exactly the correct time, something else can happen. The focus can be off just a touch or another player can run into the frame. Capturing the action requires paying close attention to the game. Do you know how many strikes there are right now? Where might the next action take place? Some luck is always helpful, too.

Here are six photos from the games I photographed today. I did not have a high batting average of great shots today, but these aren’t bad are they?

A New Sports Photography Website

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I just created a new website exclusively for my sports photography. You can view it here.

My opportunities and experience in sports photography have taken me to places I never dreamed. It is a blast to face the challenge of “recording” the game with my camera. I always say that every game tells a story and we photographers have the privilege and honor of capturing the game’s story with our camera. I am a huge sports fan and always have been my entire life. I guess I came by it innocently enough. You see, my dad played Semi-Pro Football back in the days when this level of play was the stepping stone to the pros. I’ve been watching football games probably since I was inside my mother’s womb! I still enjoy seeing a game in Philadelphia or wherever some 45 years later! I also played sports most of my life and still enjoy playing as opportunities present themselves.

I also coached sports for over nine years. I may be getting back into coach a little bit in the near future, but my years of coaching experience have paid off huge dividends when I am behind the camera. For example, when I am photographing a baseball game and a runner gets on first base, I can often predict where the action might next take place depending on the number of outs, the count on the batter, the score of the game, who is pitching, and who is at the plate. Certainly there are many variables here but my coaching experience surely helps me anticipate where I should point my camera.

My interest in sports photography began slowly some years ago when I was attending one of the baseball instructional clinics that my son was attending. Like many dads, I had my camcorder with me. But I also have training in communication with a Journalism degree from Temple University, so I took my interest to a higher level. It just so happened that I had recently received an iPod as a gift. My new goal was to use the camcorder to record the instruction and then edit it to put on my iPod. My reasoning was that players and parents could use the instruction throughout the year even after the clinic was over. I thought this might of interest to the coaches as well. That project didn’t turn out completely as I hoped, but it definitely laid the groundwork for what was about to happen in the coming months. God is so good to us if we just pay attention and follow!

Some months went by and then my son made it onto a tournament baseball team. The Lehigh Valley Baseball Academy was starting to grow and add more teams and they hired me as their sports photographer. Around the same time I also started photographing the Pleasant Valley Baseball team. These opportunities helped me gain some experience and try some new things out.

Check out my new website, look at the photos, and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your feedback. And if you know of anyone looking for a sports photographer for their team or event, please pass my website and contact information along to them.

Thanks!

-Bob