Pop Fly

Kind of unhappy with the way this looks after uploading to flickr. The upload made it more fringey and oversaturated.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qhq9​Rw

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qhwq​aK

I'm a big fan of vignetting but not too much. I can guess you're trying to single out the subject but this has too much vignetting in my opinion. Makes the image too dark. Other than that they are good shots! Good job!

Thanks for the feedback, I did apply a very very slight vignette. I didn't know what type of vision I was looking for, as this is my first prepared attempt at a sports/action shot. The subject was actually in a very shaded area, and in these two shots the sun just happened to shine through the right areas to light up the subject.

Wow. I would have guessed you put a thick vignetting. Now it's a different story. Pretty lucky to have the sun shine through onto the subject. In this case since the shade from the trees created a natural vignetting, I wouldn't have added one. But these are very good shots for action shots. Like I said before, good job.

RE: Vignette - could it be that you didn't apply a lens calibration profile (so some vignetting already), then applied a little in post, so now we have the effect seen here, because I agree, looks like heavy vignette.

Otherwise, I like them, looks like you captured the action (too bad no ball in shot 2) and your subject is sharp. Horizons look tilted to me though; optical illusion or should they be brought back slight counter-clockwise?

Thanks for sharing!

Correct, I usually don't apply the lens profile when in post. I think I may need to calibrate my monitor too. Either that or flickr really botched the files. Upon export from Lightroom, the vignetting was not as heavy, there was more detail in the trees leaves above, and the overall photo was slightly less saturated.

The second photo is indeed off level. It was shot handheld while panning. I figured I would leave it to emphasize the dramatic action effect, but I suppose I should have rotated it?

i think the shot is just a bit under exposed, rather than being too saturated (saturation is the intensity of the color not the darkness). The 85 1.8 definitely vignettes all by itself at 1.8. You were shooting at 1/8000 which is guaranteed to stop motion, but you can easily shoot this type shot at 1/4000 and probably 1/2000 to brighten up the exposure. I'm not a sports photog or anything but but occasionally shoot action shots and can freeze most bicycle motion at 1/1000.

I have no idea if flicker preserves color profiles, but that might be part of the issue. If the photo destination is the web, you should stick with working in sRGB and including that profile with every pic.

I like the shots. The trees seem vertical so i'm not sure if the horizon is tilted or if it's and optical illusion with the road going into the distance and the play of the shadow on the ground. That said, horizons a bit off can work sometimes.

When you said "Pop Fly", I expect to see a ball. It looks like a guy with nothing to do, gazing up? But, then again, I shoot a lot of baseball, and the ball is always in the shots (well, nearly always) and that is extremely important in all "ball sports" ... Baseball, Basketball, Football, Soccer etc. The shot is almost never interesting with out a ball.

This shot could just as easily be "posed" -- tell your model, "Hey, run out there and look up at a leaf" so the sense of realism is absent. BTW: no one ever said this is easy. In sports, it NEVER easy.

Thanks for the feedback. No, the ball was not in the shot. Actually this wasn't even a game; another guy was hitting a bunch of balls at a park and this subject was running around trying to catch em (although he was not good, hence no ball in the shot). I apologize for the misleading title, this was never intended to be a sports action shot but rather a snapshot of a guy trying to catch a pop fly.

Also, throughout the whole process, subject was moving at full speed. Which is why I like these two shots in particular, because the AF locked dead on to the subject while he was in motion.