Waiting for the first pitch.

oddly enough I love it. Baseball fanatic anyway.

Great capture. Simple

Well captured.

I'm so used to the rule-of-thirds that this pic throws me off. Any reason not to crop differently?

40Dude, I always struggle when trying to crop a shot to make it better and please explain you comment about the rule of thirds. I thought this crop did conform to the rule of thirds.

Here is the original for you to compare. I am always trying to learn so if anyone can help me make this a better shot I would appreciate it.

Just a little history of the shot. This was a semi-pro game and my first attempt at sports photography. It was 6:55 PM with bright sunshine behind the ball and I was shooting outside first base. I was using a EF 100-400L at 400mm, F5.6, 1/200 sec using the fence to stabilize the camera.

40Dude6aedyk wrote in post #8274789
I'm so used to the rule-of-thirds that this pic throws me off. Any reason not to crop differently?

Looks to me like he applied the rule of thirds to his crop.

The rule-of-thirds is simply to try to put the focus of interest in a pics at one-third of the picture size from 2 edges.
For example: http://digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds
This is the kinda idea I had:

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