[slideshow]On Sunday I found myself blessed to watch my sister's college soccer team (she's an assistant coach) play soccer. The weather was absolutely perfect up at Piedmont College in Northern Georgia. The ride was smooth and the family company wonderful.
The nightmare began when on this lovely, sunny fall day when I looked at the SHINNY WHITE UNIFORMS glowing in the 1PM sunlight. I also forgot my mono pod. So everything would be hand held 60-250 from the sideline stands. When the ball started moving around I realized I had a lot to learn about the sport of soccer to identify the decisive moments.
I watched for a half, and then went to work. To reduce the blown out highlight problem I activated the "highlight correction" feature. I knew of it thanks to reading the manual. Then I set my camera to shutter priority to keep the speed up enough to freeze action, and shot away. I was happy when I came home to find most photos were exposed properly. However having a ball in the photo or a good story was difficult to find. The ball moved fast, and the geometry was sometimes difficult to predict to anticipate where to put my lens. I also realized that this sport was a little harder to use my selective single frame shooting for. Soccer, like football, demands a little machine gunning photos at a critical moment to get the elements you want in the frame.
In the future I'll bring a step stool so I can move around a fence line and hold the shutter release down a little longer. The other motto from the story will be read your manual. In these fancy cameras you will find gems in the feature set which will allow you to capture the moment in some rather adverse conditions...if you know it exists!
I hope you enjoy the photos I selected!
-ehw
On Main Street Roswell you can pickup a front row seat here to watch the world go by with a cup of joe...oh that is cappuccino in the fancy neck of the woods. People sitting hear have however also been known to bring up some coffee and a Krispy Creme from down the street though!