New here

Hi, I am new here and new to photography. I would like to know what you all think of this pic. Thanx.

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Too bad its all backs. The catcher seems to be the center of attention due to composition and focus. The guy in the back sidelines is unfortunately bored. Maybe crop out the batter, and do something tight ith the ump and catcher. Weak compostion, needed a faster shutter, more aperature control.

Thanx. I see what you mean about all backs but unfortunantly, that was where my seat was. Next time I will try to move around a bit .

You could have made the back work by all means. You should have taken a photo filling the left side of the frame with the batter's back and the fill the top right of the frame with the bat OR something similar: http://i.ehow.com …/baseball-batter_Full.jpg

Definitely need to shoot with a higher shutter speed though and bump up the ISO.

Like I said, a better crop

OP, what were these shots taken with?

The camera is a Canon Rebel XS, the lens is a Tamron: 70-300 mm. It was shot hand held. I have to wait until I get home later for the shooting info as I do not remember off hand. They were taken back during the summer and my memory is not what it used to be.

oh ok

Here is the same image after cropping and some retouching. As new as I am to photography I am even newer at retouching so be nice.

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Here is the shot info as it relates to the original pic.
Shutter speed- 1/320
Aperture- f4.5
ISO speed- 1600
Focal length- 161mm
White balance- cloudy

Personally I still think the better shot is anything BUT the batter...

if you crop it like this, 1) note the big time noise you now have, and 2) there's this very distracting catchers arem in there. Since the batter id maybe too centered, crop off the back leg to get rid of the catcher.

If you were in the seats for a while, I would have liked to see maybe a shot of the "anticipation of the pitch' or something like that. Did you have more shots that were in focus and exposed correctly? Nerves? Screw ups?(for the players, not you) Anyway, since you say your new, I hope that if you are going for a moment or look for a shot that you keep that in mind. Welcome to the forum.

I tried some things for you. First I cloned out the guy in the background. I felt he was distracting. Then I cropped in. I kept the umpire because I think it keeps the photo focused on the hit rather than the batter as a person. I sharpened the image a bit, and adjusted levels to give a bit more contrast and keep it from looking washed out.

Let me know what you think:

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micah wrote in post #8814136
I kept the umpire....

I assume you meant the catcher. It looks good. I am limited to what I can do with the retouching. I only have Canon DPP program that came with the camera and Picasa 3. And I just started using both and still not too familiar with them. I do not have Photoshop. I can't afford it right now.