The cold and grey days of winter are starting to get to me. I am longing for the colors of spring and spending some time outdoors. In the spring the colors of baseball uniforms are just as bright as the flowers. I am not sure if it is the fact that I haven’t seen the vibrant colors for several months or that the sun isn’t quite as harsh in the spring.
Spring always takes my family out to the ball park. A good friend of ours has a teenage son that plays baseball for a local competitive team. Our friend is usually too focused on coaching the team and doesn’t have time to chat during the game. I love going to watch the boys play ball and capturing the action with my high powered zoom lens.
A few tricks I have learned over the past couple of ball seasons. First invest in the highest powered zoom you can afford. Each ball park is a bit different. Working around the fencing and ball netting can be tricky. Whenever possible I get up to the fence line and shoot my photos over the fence. Sometimes that just isn’t possible and I have to shoot through the diamond shapes in the fence. Get up close to the fence and actually put your lens through a hole in the fence. The closer you can physically get combined with the more powerful zoom will result in better photos. The close up shots you get will make you feel like you are right in the middle of the dust flying as they slide into home plate.
Last summer the team was playing Saturday and Sunday at a tournament. Saturday I took a bunch of pictures of all the boys during their games. Saturday evening I put them together in a photo slide show with the song Centerfield. I took my laptop back to the ball field on Sunday with the slide show. It was fun to watch the whole team of boys huddled around my laptop to watch their video. Needless to say it got them quite pumped up for the next game.