Since its baseball and softball season I wanted to share this great article about shooting both sports, the similarities of the two as well as the differences. The article titled “How to shoot baseball and softball” can be found on the Photo Journalism blog run by photographer Mark Hancock. The article itself is a little old (from 2006), so the tech specs talked about are outdated but the raw information regarding how to shoot each sport is just as relevant today as it was then.
In the article Mark talks starts out by talking about mostly about how to shoot both sports in general, then at the end of the article he clarifies some things that would be different for softball vs baseball. He touches on a great point towards the top of the article, which is that baseball/softball are GREAT sports to learn sports photography from. To quote the article directly…
“A significant reason to get good at shooting baseball is the frequency of the game. During a normal baseball season, many games are played. A quality baseball shooter has gigs from March through October.
Additionally, because baseball isn’t as hard on the players’ bodies as heavy contact sports, back-to-back games (called double headers) are common. Likewise, some pro teams may have three or four home games in a given week.”
I think that this is a great point. Practice makes perfect as they always say, and with baseball/softball in particular there is plenty of opportunity to practice. I recently began shooting the softball teams at my local high school and university, and I used the tips in this article to produce some great shots – which you can see littering this post. If you are at all interested in sports photography or baseball/softball then I suggest that you check this out.
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