Pickleball

 

Old Ideas: I am ashamed to admit that I didn't realize I had made this shot until after I scanned through the dailies*. I confess that I had once again  fixated on a particular pose or arrangement, and pursued that concept past the point of realizing the concept was doomed. 

I pretty much had free reign over how I approach the photo, subject to suggestions from my editor, including one basic imperative, eye contact with the viewer. But after nearly twenty attempts I thought I had something. These six frames were the only shots where the ball was visible, and as you can see, the photo wasn't the slam dunk I thought it would be. 

I did take some care in the positioning of my subject. Using the court's service line as a guide,  I positioned my subject so his right foot would always be on the line, and had him bounce the ball on the same line to increase the chances that the ball and his face would be in the same plane of focus when the paddle made contact with the ball. As you can see in the single photo to the right, the concept was good, but the execution almost impossible due to the nature of the swing and follow-through. Sad to say, the majority of the shots missed the mark, or worse, captured a moment when the ball was completely out of the frame.

The photo at the top of this post was the only one where my subject made eye contact with me. In this static moment, the focus was on, and the sun light came from camera left and high in the sky behind my subject. Sometimes a real gem shows up in a bucket of rejects and near misses, and in my case, the fates gifted both my editor and me with a winner.

In a future post I'll be discussing a technique called FP High Speed Synchronization, a flash technique that allow me to use a largish aperture (F 5.6) to soften the background and provide a fast mechanical shutter speed well past the normal limitations of a focal plane shutter. Stay tuned.

*Dailies are the raw, unedited footage taken on a movie set. The term is also used to describe film that has been processed but not yet edited and color-corrected. For source document click here.