Sawed Off--interested to know what you think.

Taken this summer. Cropped as tight as possible without cutting off the broken bat, or the batter's back foot. Could have taken a little more off the top, though. Think I should have cropped out the ball?

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...opped72ppi.jpg

Nikon D70, Nikkor 70-300mm
taken at 135 mm/4.5, 1/2000 sec
natural light

Stunning capture well done :) Composition is good i would not touch anything :) Well maybe a little more DOF by bluring ot the back bench a bit . Again good Capture :)

You should always leave the ball in the picture if the sport has a ball in it! Here's one I took a couple of years ago, with a 10D at ISO 800, with a 300 f/4 IS + 1.4TC, from the left field bleachers. The ball makes this shot, and is essential for yours!

As what Stephen pointed out, the ball is a critical component of this picture. A wonderful shot (both of them), though I may crop off the whole batcatcher's glove with swmdryfan's picture. All in all, a great capture IMO.

Jared

You've captured the moment very well swmdrayfan. Great job!

Since you said you've cropped it in, I'd love to see more breathing space around the action here. Everything is too much around the edges (as the player, the ball).

How did you manage to time this; to get that broken bat incident. Took me a while to notice it and to get the bat and the ball before it went out of the picture is great. The shadows of the ball and especially the broken off bit of the bat is interesting. Pity the ball is so close to the bottom of the frame.. maybe you could put a little bit back.
So because of your timing here I would put any little blips on the back burner. Great stuff.
Tom

Here's the original....the HP umpire needs to be more fully in the frame, and there should be more dof to get the background a little softer, but all in all, it wasn't bad. As far as the timing, I've been trying so hard to capture the precise moment of impact between ball and bat, I will get one of these every now and then.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...kenbatAug5.jpg

Here's one that ended up in At The Yard (a national publication about minor league baseball).
The bat was just beginning to come apart:
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...rias7-6-05.jpg

Yup, always need a ball, puck, whatever if it's a sports shot. Nice catches there. This is one thing I miss shooting high school baseball...no broken bats when they are all aluminum :rolleyes: Man I can't beleive what they pay for aluminum bats :eek:

JS

i think you need a little photoshop to make it pop. Play with the saturation a bit, along with levels. It also looks a bit tilted downward on the right side. And like knight said, work on blurring out the background. that can be done in photoshop. Good capture though, now it just needs some PP.