Zack Wheeler – 2011

I shot my first baseball game of the season the other night. It was the California/Carolina League All Star Game. The best Single A advanced kids from both coasts.

Shooting a night game is always a challenge. Once the sun goes down, you never have enough light to shoot at speeds that capture the action. So you up the ISO and hope that the images don’t get too grainy. Even then you are stuck shooting at 1/100th of a second.

So you try to work with what you can. Capture the pitchers face and let the arm be a blur. Shoot batters as they’re set for a pitch and don’t try to catch the swing.

You can play with the images a bit afterwards. But there is only so much noise that you can remove before the image is blurry. And do you tinker with the white balance because of the lights, or just live with that yellow tinge?

After a while, you realize that it is best just to put the camera down and enjoy the game.