Paparazzi at the Ballpark!

I had many of my Photoshop students join me Thursday 23 February 2012 for what I called "Paparazzi at the Ballpark."  In this case, it was to photograph our own Paradise Valley Community College Pumas as they hosted the Thompson River College team from Kamloops, British Columbia.

I gave my students the option to learn about Photoshop editing their own photos.  I find that works a lot better than merely editing the photos of another from the textbook examples.  

Although the day was not as wildly popular as I had hoped, we did have a chance at taking photos in the field with all of its challenges.  Special thanks to PVCC Coach Solis and Athletic Director Silcox for giving us on-the-field access before the game.  During the game, we were confronted with a huge problem of shooting through the chain link fence!  That little challenge rendered many of my photos useless, but I had some work arounds.

I shot using a Canon 7D.  On this day, I brought three lenses:  the Canon 28-135mm for on field close ups, the Tamron 70-200mm, and the Tamron 200-500mm.  

Frustrated with trying to shoot through the fence, I saw a berm that could take me over the eight foot high outfield fence, so I walked out to right field and mounted my Canon 7D and Tamron 200-500mm on my Manfrotto monopod.  I was able to get some good shots unobstructed by a #$%$ fence!  The challenge here is camera shake at the longest focal lengths, so I set my shutter speed to around 1/1000 of a second.  

In a perfect world, I'd have loved to be in a cherry picker high above the action!

I set up a group page on Flickr for my students to post photos of this day.  It is located at http://www.flickr.com/groups/pvcc_baseball_2012/pool/


Happy Shooting,


Jim Patterson
http://JamesGordonPatterson.com