Thursday, May 14, 2009

This picture is easily my favorite sports picture that I have take so far. Here you have a young athletic midfielder, DJ O'Connell, being guarded by two Herkimer defenders. When I captured this image, I immediately knew that I had something good here, but I wasn't sure about the exposure being the I was standing right at midfield and not at the top of the box, where this action took place.

What catches my eye about this exposure is the depth of field. The clarity of all the players involved in the picture is outstanding, ranging from the goalie to the attacker from Onondaga. I love the focus of the goalie, you can clearly see that he is preparing for a shot. The other outstanding part of this image is the fact O'Connell is actually preparing to move to his right.

You can clearly see that the two Herkimer defenders motion is committed to moving the left, they are completely faked out. The last aspect of this image that make is stand out is the position of O'Connell's stick. With the stick in his left hand and complete extended from his body you can see the amount of body and stick control it takes to successfully complete a split dodge.

With O'Connell's knee barely touching the field turf surface, his motion is instantly capture by the camera, using a shutter speed of 1/820 there was no blurry in this picture.

O"Connell creates a great opportunity not only for himself to score but for a photographer to capture an unique image. I would have to say in my opinion that this photo sets a pretty high bar that I attempt to achieve every time I shoot.

Herkimer Community college is a pretty decent play to shoot sports photography. The fence that surrounds the field isn't that far away and isn't to high as well. So you can get pretty close to the action without having a press pass.

This picture was taken at the 2009 Section 3 Tournament held in Herkimer NY.

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