PV Baseball @ Northampton

PV Baseball 2013-03-27-039 matte

A cold and blustery day was the setting for Pleasant Valley’s second baseball games of the season. It seemed more like fall football weather instead of spring! In the photo above, Adam Raseley is tossing his bat toward the dugout after he walked at his at-bat.

PV Baseball 2013-03-27-131 Matte

The weather did not stop the players from putting their game on the field. Here, Adam Raseley is throwing a ball he gobbled up on a grounder to record an out. Jordan Caffrey is playing first base. The PV infield was strong all through this game!

PV Baseball 2013-03-27-170 Matte

Here, Travis Van Houten is eying up a pitch coming into his zone. PV strung together some good hits and capitalized on some costly errors made by Northampton. PV stayed on top to earn the victory and go 1-1 in the early 2013 season.

PV Baseball 2013-03-27-234 Matte

Third baseman, Austin Yoffredo, is throwing to 1B to secure another out on defense.

PV Baseball 2013-03-27-543 Matte

James Shank worked a count deep and received a base-on-balls twice in the late innings.

A Big Night for Pleasant Valley Football’s #28 – Austyn Borre

It was a big night for #28, Austyn Borre, on Friday. Borre broke the Pleasant Valley rushing record for the season as he hit 1,083 yards by the end of the game against Allen. Rain fell on the field at times, but it certainly did not rain on Austyn’s parade!

The running back’s banner night started with some impressively strong runs. He put together one hard, fast run after another and found the end zone a total of four times! In addition to quick moves and strong runs, Borre found the seams made my his offensive linemen and quickly darted through them to add to his yardage. It was a clinic for running backs and propelled the Bears to huge victory to remain undefeated in the Mountain Valley Conference.

The run which broke the season record was an impressive 91 yard run where broke away from defenders in a flash going untouched into the end zone. The previous school season record was 1,081 held by Rob Getz who now plays at Widener. Borre is a freshman and brings with him a lot of running back power toward PV’s current season run for the MVC Championship. He also brings much promise for the next three years!

Pleasant Valley kept the pressure on Allen all evening and Borre kept running and adding up yard after yard. The final score was 42-0. He ran the ball 14 times for a total of 185 yards, which averaged 13.2 yards per carry. Not bad for a freshman who is definitely making an impact for the Bears when they face their opponents. Coach Terwilliger must be very happy to have such a weapon on his offense as the team comes down the final stretch for the MVC Championship. Two upcoming games against East Stroudsburg North and Stroudsburg will cap the season and determine the champion.

Photographing this game was a great experience for me as I tried to highlight the rushing record and tell the story of the game. Photographing a high school football game under the lights can be a real challenge to say the least. However, great subjects like Austyn Borre with his incredible running talent and Coach Terwilliger’s passion for football and his players makes it all so much easier by creating great subject matter!

Part of the problem with night games is the lack of light for our cameras. High ISOs and fast shutter speeds are the name of the game for sports photographers at these venues. The falling rain added to the challenge, but photographing the record-breaking run and the coach handing the game ball to Borre made this an historic game within the game! Fans were treated to a big win and a season high rushing record to boot! Now who wouldn’t want to photograph that?

To view all the photographs from this game, click here.

Baseball Photo Shoot

The weather is breaking into spring-like weather and the baseball season will soon be under way!

Yesterday I spent the morning photographing the player portraits for their yearly program. It is always fun to be around the players to sense and hear their excitement and witness their enthusiasm on the brink of a new baseball season. This was one day after try-outs were finished so there was a sense of relief in the air but also a real sense of anticipation as well. These boys are ready to put their game on the field!

On a personal note, our son James made the varsity team as a sophomore and we couldn’t be more proud of him! The above photo is James posing for his player profile, which will appear in the baseball program that will be handed out this season.Isn’t that quite a game-face?

 

Behind the Scenes on this Photo Shoot

This year instead of a basic, boring background like a brick wall, I used the team’s newly created logo and made a design to serve as a backdrop to the player profile photos. A few setup steps in Photoshop and the banners were off to the printer to come out as durable vinyl banners. When it arrived I inserted metal grommets into each corner so I could then attach the banner to my two backdrop stands. I set this up in the locker room, which served as my studio for this shoot. The boys were getting their uniforms for the season, which made this a convenient time for the photos to be taken.

I also set up my main light source off to the side of this backdrop at about a 40-degree angle and up high. My SB-900 speedlight was used remotely and I attached it behind an Ezybox to disperse the light over the subjects. This softens the light in a pleasing manner and avoids any hotspots in the photos. I also attached the dome diffuser to further diffuse the light. One test shot and I was ready to go! I really enjoy using Nikon’s off-camera flash setup. It’s quick, easy, and very effective!

Once back in my office, it was time to edit the photo shoot. First, I examined each player’s photos and used Lightroom’s Survey View to quickly narrow down the options and pick the best photo. This was repeated for each player on the Varsity and then the Junior Varsity team. Next it was time to do a few adjustments to the photos. I started on the first photo and then synched these edits across the entire collection to apply them to the rest of the photos. Since my setup was controlled and consistent, my sync was also consistent. I like Lightroom for this kind of process, too!

Finally, I renamed each photograph with the name and number of each player. This will help the layout guys when assembling the baseball program for printing. Now I am sending all the files to a DVD to send in to the school tomorrow.

It’s been a busy weekend but it was fun! The photo shoot went well and I am pleased with the results. I hope the players and their families agree!

 

A Dream Come True in a Big Way!

Two years ago I was photographing my son at baseball camp while he was attending the Ripken Academy in Aberdeen, Maryland. One of his games was on Ripken Stadium which featured photo wells for photographers to shoot the game right beside the dugout. So started my dream–I hoped to one day be able to shoot a minor league baseball game from a photo well.

Well today I photographed from the photo well at Coca Cola Park, the home of the Iron Pigs in Allentown, PA. I was there to photograph the District 11 AAAA Championship between Parkland and Pleasant Valley. It was so sweet!

I have been extremely busy the past two months shooting many baseball games and watching the PV High School team dominate most of their opponents. The racked up some big scores, mercy-runned several of their opponents and kept on winning! Now they are District Champs and go on to play in States.

You can view some of my work here.

I hope you enjoy the collages I created. They are custom made–my first decent attempt at creating an interesting background for the collages.