Shaun Udal

A photo that was published recently.

Any interest?

I've been trying my hand at cricket photos this summer, taking pictures in Battersea Park for my local team. I'm keen to learn from what others are up to. I'm also new to critiquing, and suspect that the process may be more useful to me than you!

I really like your shot, with the bowler's balletic pose, and the ball nicely placed in relation to the his head and arms. I find the background a little distracting, and there's perhaps a little lack of sharpness in the ball and in Udal's face (compression artefact?). I think it seems a little unbalanced overall, with the interesting bits (ball, face, arms) very close to the right edge.

Not sure of your shutter/aperture settings - could you have opened aperture up wider, throwing the stands more out of focus? As for balance, perhaps framing the shot so that bowler were more central would have helped the balance of the composition a little.

I've been finding that with shots of the bowler, it can be difficult to keep the umpire out of the frame. (Crop him out in this pic and you lose the bowler's rather graceful right leg.) Walking along the boundary towards and past square leg can help, but then I'm no longer face-on to the bowler; I prefer to go straighter (e.g. behind/to right of the slips) provided the bowler's not delivering the ball from too close to the stumps, and that there isn't a full slip cordon blocking the view. Of course, walking around the boundary's easy in Battersea Park - but less so at a 1st Class game...

I've just had a look at your other pics on here and I'm light years behind in every aspect. I hope you regard the above as constructive - it all seems rather presumptuous coming from a novice (especially as I now see that this pic has been published (may I ask where?)). I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Regards

Thank's for taking the time to provide me with your comments.This image was shot with the 300/4 IS+1.4x wide open. Yes, a 400/2.8 would have given a better depth of field and I could probably have dropped the iso down to about 100, thereby producing less noise, but that lens is around 5-fold the cost of the combination I was using.

But the image was still considered good enough to publish along with seven other pages of my photos.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3228/3027198344_d7424e1cfe.jpg

A distracting background? Well yes, but this is what cricket looks like. There are almost no situations where you can get a background that doesn't look cluttered.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3541/3512586412_12dffd0b26.jpg

There are times whan the background forms a vital and informative part of the image

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3583/3474129326_fc13575570.jpg

And there are other times when the background can be the principal element of an image

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3562/3494241547_dcb12b1fc0.jpg

I could have cropped out the umpire, but I happen to like the juxtaposition of the static and dynamic. And as an umpire, I like to see that man in my shots where I consider it a telling component.

With regard to having the ball sharp, Shaggy is a spin bowler, so the seam is going to be at near right angles to the direction of flight. On the crop posted here, you are unlikely to see any real detail on the white ball. On the full resolution image, the stitching is clear and the quarter seam on the face of the ball is perfectly visible.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, Peter, for a much more comprehensive response than I could have expected. I take your point about backgrounds. At my point in the learning-curve, I'm struggling to balance my aesthetic preferences (e.g. v narrow depth-of-field) against the realities of a fiscal (can't afford a fast-enough lens) and physical (cricket grounds make busy backdrops) nature. (I've even tried resorting to photoshop cheating to simulate a much narrower depth-of-field but the results don't look at all good.) Your other shots illustrate beautifully

how one can make the background one's friend.

By the way, I've dithered somewhat about subscribing to photo.net as I wasn't sure I'd get much out of it - your response has convinced me. Perhaps the administrators will give you a cut of my subs...

Thanks again.

N

p.s. Love the shots on your website, too.