My most familiar photography subjects are sports and, lucky for me, my daughter had a game on Saturday! Sports is a little different than landscapes or still-life. There is minimal opportunity for intentional composition.
When I arrived at the game, I sat on the floor near mid-court. I was hoping to get the girls dribbling on a fast break so that I could minimize the number of people in the background. In my zeal, I snapped this photo of a shot. Oops! The bright light from the window just wasn't going to work! Still it was kind of cool so I made a note to play with it at home.
I cropped slightly to remove the feet on the left and right side of the image. Also there was a poster in the upper right corner that needed to go. I did try to straighten a bit, but couldn't get both the white line on the wall and the basketball goal to look straight at the same time and gave up. There was still a bit too much color, so I darkened a bit and drew down the color saturation. I did leave just a little color - I like the warmth of the wood floor, but didn't like the attention being drawn to the scoreboard lights.
The next photo is my daughter. The original takes in too much of the court, but she is looking close to the camera. Unfortunately the gym light is poor and this is as close as I can get with my prime lens. Cropping to focus on Megan helps a lot. My depth of field is a little greater than I would prefer, but still enough to allow the girls in the background to be slightly less distracting.
As part of the class, we've been talking about camera capability. This photo was taken with no flash - I don't want to blind the girls with my hobby.
ISO 1600
F2.0
1/250
No Flash
If she was moving I would expect significant blur at that shutter speed. I was lucky that she stood relatively still for several seconds.
This photo journal prompt included a question, "When did you lose a sense of time?" Interestingly, I went from this basketball game to an orchid show where I wandered around taking shots of flowers. I left, bored, after 30 minutes. At the game, I had the excitement of the competition, the engagement of the players, and the extra challenge of lighting and timing.
