During a long drive back home yesterday after taking some photos at a baseball game, the question popped into my head. Is photography part luck? If so how much of it is luck and how much is skill? Now, I talk a lot during my workshops and sometimes random topics pop up depending on the questions asked, but I don\u2019t think the topic of luck has ever come up which is a shame because it has to be considered.<\/p>\n
Yesterday morning I drove to Hagerstown, MD to see the Washington Nationals\u2019 newest #1 draft pick, Bryce Harper, in action playing for the Single-A Hagerstown Suns. If you\u2019re reading this sometime in the future, hopefully you\u2019re saying \u201cWow, they had that guy in the minor leagues?\u201d I wasn\u2019t there for very long as they were completing a suspended game from the previous day and then it started raining so they never actually played the game that I had a ticket for.\u00a0\u00a0Although I wasn\u2019t there long, I managed to get some cool shots including a pretty violent collision at home plate.<\/p>\n
When I arrived at the game, I sat on the third base line. Since those are the seats I purchased, I figured I would hang out there and scope out the stadium to pick a better location. I chose the third base line since Harper is left-handed and I wanted to make sure I wasn\u2019t taking photos of his back. This positioning allowed me to get a few shots of his first at bat.\u00a0\u00a0By the way, he doubled and then scored when the next hitter doubled.\u00a0\u00a0I thought the background of these photos were a little busy so I looked around the stadium and noticed a nice single seat up high behind the plate near the press box that wasn\u2019t accessible to the public. If I knew this was going to turn into a blog post I would have taken a picture of it from below!<\/p>\n
I asked nicely and was allowed access; I think the big camera and lens help when it comes to getting access. Now, I literally had a bird\u2019s eye view of the park. I had my 200-400mm lens so I could reach any infield player, but I didn\u2019t use it much as I also had my 70-200mm and 85mm f1.8. I was playing around with angles seeing what I wanted the next time Harper came up and then it happened. Man on second and a hit to left field. I\u2019ve been watching baseball my whole life so I knew what was about to happen… A play at the plate!\u00a0\u00a0I had the 85mm on my Nikon D3s and just laid on the shutter button even before the player was in the frame. I wasn\u2019t even watching the play since I knew I would be playing it back on my LCD. This is where the D3s earns its money. I didn\u2019t have to worry about missing a shot or my buffer; I just held down the shutter button until the smoke cleared and the Suns runner was… SAFE!<\/p>\n
No matter how long you take pictures, it\u2019s still fun; still a rush and moments like this keep you coming back. So how much of this was luck, skill, equipment? It\u2019s all of the above. First, I shouldn\u2019t say luck. Let\u2019s say, right place at the right time. I happened to ask and be allowed access near the press box not long before the play happened. But, that\u2019s one component and part of it was having the right equipment. I also brought a Canon 60D with me that has a much slower frame rate than the Nikon D3s so if that was the camera in my hand at the time, it probably would have been an 8 picture series with bigger gaps. And even if you have the D3s, you can miss your focus, have your shutter speed too slow, not have the camera set at the fastest frame rate, or something else that can lose your shot.<\/p>\n
So, driving back, I couldn\u2019t help but think that luck plays a part although you have to be ready to get that shot when it\u2019s presented which takes us back to something I talk about all of the time at my workshops… PRACTICE!\u00a0\u00a0I would say luck was on my side, but in Bryce Harper\u2019s second (and last) at bat when I was perched up there ready and set to go…. he was intentionally walked and then I got rained on.\u00a0\u00a0So much for luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During a long drive back home yesterday after taking some photos at a baseball game, the question popped into my head. Is photography part luck? If so how much of it is luck and how much is skill? Now, I talk a lot during my workshops and sometimes random topics pop up depending on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","pmpro_default_level":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/brandenburg-gate.jpg?fit=3300%2C2199&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6284,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6283\/revisions\/6284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dslrworkshops.com\/staging\/4845\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}