I headed to Keene on Thursday evening to watch the Swamp Bats play the Old Orchard Beach Raging Tide in a New England Collegiate Baseball League game — of course I took my camera!
The price of admission was right (only four bucks), the evening was beautiful and the baseball was great! The home team won 6-4.
As you might expect, one can pretty much wander the ball park (Alumni Field at Keene High School) at a game like this. Thus, after a few false starts, I settled in kneeling on the ground (amid the players duffel bags) on the outfield side of the visitors dugout. I had the 70-300 mm lens attached to the camera; the long end is almost too much “reach” for a position this close to the action.
Here are the “keepers” from the evening:
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Note that all of these images are in black and white. I began processing these as color images but something about “Bat Boys #1” (the fourth image) said “black and white” to me. After a converted this image to black and white, I realized this classic look would be perfect for such a classic subject. Thus I re-processed the first few images and continued with the same look for the rest of the series.
Displaying the images in black and white also helps minimize distractions in the backgrounds which can be sort of busy when the spectators are part of the background. Black and white also helps minimize the distracting bright yellow cover atop the outfield fence
And, not one damsel fly among the bunch! So proud of your expansion to a world beyond macro and the dragonflies! I agree the B&W look great. Thanks for pointing out a few good reasons for going this route – background distractions minimized and that annoying yellow fence! So where will you be going next – portraiture? Boudoir?? Jewelry???
Comment by Just Joe — 18 July 2011 @ 7:48 AM