The Coach..

[royv]

A quick shot from today at our Table Tennis club, I did'n't have to play myself but I went to see some matches of my clubmates anyway. Instead of bringing along my 70-200L like I always do, I decide to try out my brand new Sigma 10-20mm. I like this shot the most. C&C appreciated. :)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2046/2268268733_9ce880995b_o.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/7369492@N04/2268268733/sizes/o/)

[danaitch]

Composition-wise, I'd have cropped the left-hand side out and made it very definitely just the 'Coach' watching the table. A nice image though, IMHO.

I don't know if any other English people are bothered by this photo, but you'd think Fabio Capello would have something more useful to do than watch table tennis! :lol:

[troutbreath]

I honestly didn't know that table tennis had coaches. I agree with the possible recomposition -- just the coach and the table would be interesting.

[Croasdail]

I love your stuff.. it's soo unique compared to the same stuff we get here day in and out. I like the idea of the shot, but am really surprised how quick the DOF fall off is in this shot. Particularly the chap in the jeans... he is completely soft. Thinking of this though... stopping down to get better DOF would be kind of cool if you could get the exposure slow enough to get some really good blur from the players themselves. The whole frame clear with the players motioned out. Might make for a kind of cool shot. Anyway, thanks for sharing - always refreshing to see.

[royv]

Thanks for your replies guys, I liked the composition tip and thus I went back to Photoshop with it. However, just the coach and the table makes a bit of an akward picture qua composition. The next time I'm at a match I'll try again with that idea in mind, see if I can do a better job. For now I just cropped it a little more, and that's it. Thanks again.

Croasdail, I tried a similar thing once. I like the idea though, if I can ask him to sit still for once and I could get some more stabilisation for the long exposure shot then I'll deffinately will try it sometime.
Also the reason for the relatively small depth of field is due to me focusing on the coach from up close like that at f/4.5 I also only sharpened the coach in the pics, nothing else.

I think this picture has a good newspaper-feel. If the local papers ever ran a story about this guy than this would make a pretty nice illustration shot in combination with a normal portrait.

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/9753/coachnd8.jpg

I still have lots to learn about UWA but it's a lot of fun so far! :D