Portrait of a catcher

Took this today at my son's game. This is him playing catcher.

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

You mean, "This is him playing catcher" rather than "catching". I was expecting an action shot, and after it took forever for my internet to upload it (could be my notoriously slow Sunday morning broadband) I was a bit disappointed when I saw a posed shot rather than a 'thwack, cloud of dust' image. Sorry.

I agree with the above poster on both counts. It did load awfully slow for some reason. While the shot is an OK portrait, this doesn't hold much interest for anyone outside the subject's immediate family.

JeffreyG wrote in post #5768913
I agree with the above poster on both counts. It did load awfully slow for some reason.

Loads fine here. Not really sure why it would be loading slow. Must be all the Sunday morning traffic.

True, but isn't that about 80% of what's posted here? What's funny is that my nephew ordered an 11x14 of this for his dorm room. My nephew took a real shine to my son when we were in Florida visiting them. But I digress.

asysin2leads wrote in post #5768948
True, but isn't that about 80% of what's posted here? What's funny is that my nephew ordered an 11x14 of this for his dorm room. My nephew took a real shine to my son when we were in Florida visiting them. But I digress.

Yes, there are a lot of 'sportraits' here. I'm not knocking the shot, I'm just suggesting that this picture is a portrait, and as such it appeals only to the subject and family.

Taking forever to load... got to the eyes and Im done...

It loaded fine for me and it's something I would have shot. it's the perfect "Mom" shot.

JeffreyG wrote in post #5768992
Yes, there are a lot of 'sportraits' here. I'm not knocking the shot, I'm just suggesting that this picture is a portrait, and as such it appeals only to the subject and family.

I know you weren't. I was just making a statement, also. I just found it funny that I got the order confirmation for the 11x14 from my nephew this morning. I never would have expected it.

Loaded fast this time...

Sportraits sell just as well as amazing action shots. Smiles and images of them interacting with their friends or celebrating ALWAYS sell. I am always looking for great candids when covering teams!

Well and not to pile injury on insult but it's OOF and yes it was horribly slow loading.

Nothing wrong with the shot, focus looks like it's right on the eyes behind the cage...Personally I would prefer it a bit wider and maybe get the arms up and the catcher's glove in the pose, but there's nothing wrong here. If you like it, and the child likes it, that's what matters. One of my favorite shots of my son is him catching, or "playing catcher" for those being nit-picky on the wording...

Ultimately, if the client (you and the child in this case) is happy it's a winner...

Here's the one of my son I'm talking about, no action, but it works for me and hangs in our house...

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Kevin,

Yeah, the focus looks OK, but the DOF is pretty thin:

Lens (mm): 280
ISO: 100
Aperture: 4
Shutter: 1/640

The "Diamond" logo is a bit blown out, which makes it looks more OOF than it is.

When I'm shooting "Mom Shots", especially in bright daylight like this, I'll stop down even further, to maybe f/5.6 or even f/8.0 . You could have gotten away with a shutter speed around 1/400s (bump up your ISO while stopping down the lens to maintain your shutter speed). From f/4.0 to f/8.0 is a two stop bump which only doubles the DOF (each stop increases DOF by the square root of 2) but this should be enough to keep the background OOF and catch more of the player within the DOF.

I'm with Ed - I'd like to see him doing something instead of just standing there. There are plenty of chances to get these "Mom Shots" when the kid is doing something funny or memorable.

dmwierz wrote in post #5774897
Kevin,

Yeah, the focus looks OK, but the DOF is pretty thin:

Lens (mm): 280
ISO: 100
Aperture: 4
Shutter: 1/640
...

Then that's the problem too narrow DOF in fact so narrow it looks oof.