[Yugoboy]

Well, based on all the love here (not counting orionid‘s latest contribution… lotta love there, too) I ginned up the courage and emailed the company. It was after noon on a Friday, so I have no idea how long it will be before I hear from them.

I finally discovered what the “Hi0.3, Hi0.7, Hi1.0” ISO settings are. I’ve got a couple pretty nice higher shutter shots from tonight I’ll post (including one where you can see the stitches on the ball in flight) probably tomorrow. My main (non-work) computer’s busy copying a Korean DVD before it has to go back to the library tomorrow.

Oh yeah… if you’re a baseball fan, you’ll be interested to know Andy Pettite is pitching at our stadium on Sunday. The place is already sold out. I have no idea if he’ll be pitching long enough for me to get pix (because I have to work past opening… I usually get in somewhere in the 3rd-4th inning), but if he is, I’ll definitely post at least 1 pic. Honestly, I’m not a baseball fan as far as following teams. Sometimes I forget to check the score in the stadium before I leave. I’m enjoying the photography. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Pettite pitch on TV, so this’ll be interesting. I imagine that after he’s pulled hundreds of people will leave.

[Yugoboy]

They DID approach YOU. You negotiated a few bucks for that other picture, any thoughts on seeing if they’ll at least be open to haggling so your deal would allow you to sell if someone comes to you rather than them?

Just a thought. Exposure’s good, even if there’s *some* limitation. Good on you for reading the ToS, though. At least you wouldn’t be negotiating from a position of weakness if they will talk.

[Yugoboy]

Are you putting these photos where someone googling the team would find them?
Your shots are just as good as the ones for sale on their website, and many are a lot better.

Actually, I’m fixing to email that company soon (I should have done it last weekend). They’re a local media group that does all the town weeklies in the area. I figure if I can get them interested, maybe I can get them on the site, a few sold, and definitely a press pass so I can get into all the different events we’ve got. We have no major league teams, but we’ve got whole bunches of minor league teams. It’d be cool as heck to get into them for free (especially since I now get the parking for free, too!)

[Yugoboy]

Man, if you had BIF (ball in frame) on that Mastroianno @ first shot it would be magazine quality stuff. Excellent work.

The one I do have with BIF was blurry. I either gotta live with the occasional loss due to blurry, but be in control of focus, or keep it on autofocus and deal with whatever it chooses to focus on. Even when I jack the ISO up to 2500, I’m still shooting at about 1/150-1/250 f5-5.6ish on a well-lit shot when it’s a night game. Maybe I should be trying to use the manual focus lens as I can also control f-stops.

Thanx for the compliment, however!

I’m trying to get beyond just “guy at plate” or “pitcher winding up/throwing” shots, but still get good action. My 55-200 can only get me just so close.

[Yugoboy]

Reminder for me, please (as it’s only my second one of these, and the last one was a year ago really shortly after I joined up).

Are these shots from old contests that may be entrants or B-sides, or is it anything I’ve shot between May 12, 2011 & May 12, 2012?

[Yugoboy]

So, exactly when will the list be finalized?

EDIT: And will it be posted here, or get its own thread?

[Yugoboy]

That shot of the catcher is total win.

Thanx! I kinda got lucky with that, but not so lucky that I don’t have 4 more very similar to it. The bullpen is lower than the hillside where pedestrians are allowed, and I get to work as batting practice is beginning.

Tonight I got a few really nice shots, I think. The first one, is a guy NOT getting caught off first (Mastroianno). The shot where he successfully stole second is quite blurry so it’s not here. He got stranded at second at inning end, so the second shot is him returning to the dugout being the only player to successfully do ANYTHING that inning. In the at-bat immediately after this, one run was earned for the Yankees when the guy in the third photo sent the ball (visible in the photo) over the fence. I actually have 3 shots from his hoe run trot, including coming home, but they aren’t quite as compelling as the initial blast photo.

[Yugoboy]

We are going from a species of tool creators to a species of tools,..

That good sir, is the single most eloquent, succinct and lucid sentence encapsulating 15 years of me ranting. I am keeping that one on a plaque, my business card and on my bumper.

Get on that, ennui. Copyright it and make me some bumper stickers dammit.

Yes… do that… much more universal and useful than my pithy comment you quoted above.

[Yugoboy]

Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs v. Red Wings April 25

Yankees v. Red Wings May 2

[Yugoboy]

I read somewhere a quip that Instagram was the Autotune of photography.

I’d like credit for that, bud… 😆

In a nation where talent shows are top rated, and any joker with a beat track and rhyming dictionary can land a recording contract you’re going to find that actual taste is over-rated.

While I know my life has been greatly improved by the modern pharmaceutical industry, the rampant distribution of pills for this and that “as seen on TV” means everybody thinks they can solve their problems as easily as a click of a mouse, a flip of a switch, or the swallowing of two tablets.

Real talent takes work to develop. How many child prodigies grow up to obscurity? How many “great” high school athletes find out in college they’re simply good or average when the talent pool deepens?

I know we want to rail on Instagram (and it certainly deserves it), but it’s just as useless as telling the children here in my school that Justin Beiber is less talented than Tony Bennet, and that his career will be a (small) fraction of what Tony’s has been. It’s hard to ignore, but if we can somehow do it, we’ll be a little happier, I think.

While I know that I’ll always be playing 5th fiddle around here, and that a win will be almost an accident, I still take pride in the work I put in, as well as every time someone compliments me on the work I do. Most of the people I meet on a daily basis don’t get to say “I could do that” when they see what I create.

Whatever else Instagram does do, it cannot replace real talent. People will tire of it eventually (I hope). That, and/or the ubiquity of it will dilute the “wow” factor, and composition, lighting, color and talent will become impressive again.

For further insight, please refer to the book “Outliers”

[Yugoboy]

So… how many items are to be on the list?

Too many and it becomes tedious. Too few and you limit participation.

I kind of like 10-12 with a goal of *trying* to get at least 8 into the 3 entries – it should be the effort that counts… I’m not likely to do very well with this, but I’ll give it the college try. I can say that each image will be well-crafted and include elements from the list.

As for the “People of WalMart” being less than available to non-US Farktographers… you’ve got your Travellers, Tinkers, your loud obnoxious boobs, and generally people who refuse to conform to societal norms (but not in a good or fun way – blue-haired punk rockers are not the kind of people I’m thinking of here…) you guys have access to Youtube… search for Randy Quaid, Larry the Cable Guy or Roseanne Barr.

[Yugoboy]

Everything’s in!

Got a chance to pull out the Neutral Density filter today. Due to the slow shutter speeds, I used the remote trigger as well. Stored the pics on my new HD.

High Falls downtown:

This is what it looks like when it’s sunny and shutter speed’s much faster (this was taken 11 months ago):

Here’s a shot with the Macro tubes, all 3 of ’em (49mm) attached to the 55-200:

Here’s the same baseball with the tubes on the 18-55:

[Yugoboy]

I just can’t see buying a really good one. If it’s your sole machine, it makes more sense

This is why my next laptop will be a bit more top-of-the-line than this one was. When I bought this one, it was a pretty nice one (still is, for what I need), but I also had a desktop machine. It didn’t take long for that machine to get ignored pretty thoroughly. Laptop really works well for the way I work.

About the only reason I’d like a desktop is the excuse to buy a big-ass monitor.

Gonna be a few years until the next one, though, so I am going to have to get a bit o’ memory.

[Yugoboy]

Good lord how my wife complained when I forced her from IE to Firefox years ago. I had to, I was cleaning out malware weekly from her machine. I finally told her I wasn’t going to maintain her machine anymore unless she cut the cord with IE.

When XP becomes completely deprecated, she’s moving to Linux.

You’re lucky you couold even get your wife to switch. Mine refuses to. Uses Outlook, too.

My work laptop came with just the Microsoft stuff, but I’ve since learned about PortableApps.com, and rarely use IE on that machine either.

I never even bothered with trying to bootleg MSOffice or use some out of date model (of even buy the $10 version the district was offering)… when I got this computer, I just did the OpenOffice thing and haven’t looked back. Of course, my wife made me buy HER the $10 MSOffice, because God knows that was apparently easier than learning OpenOffice… bleah.

I really miss Windows95. As far as I’m concerned, everything since W98 is just bloatware… Who in 1995 thought we’d ever have an OS that took a full Gigabyte of hard drive space?

*Grumble*Grumble*Grouch*

[Yugoboy]

Those are beautiful. Don’t know if actually living someplace further north of here is something I’d even think about, even if I could get shots like that… too damn cold! (It’s too damn cold here, too, but we’re already here, so we’re not exactly choosing it, so much as settling.)

I’ve seen a couple this far south, but they didn’t look like that. We’ve had red skies, and one night/morning while I was delivering papers, I had the perfect vantage for some that looked like huge white glowing kites/crosses. Yours are definitely nicer.

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