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"Hit for Six" by FEPS member Simon Roulstone wins top digital award at Previsions 2010.
XRR Photographic Society based in Garston, Watford has organised the annual Previsions photographic competition amongst local photographic clubs for the last 25 years.
Field End is a strong supporter of the event which makes a very pleasant and entertaining afternoon and evening towards the end of November.
At this year's competition held on Sunday 28 November 2010, one of FEPS' digital images, Hit for Six by Simon Roulstone (seen left) was selected by Judge Ann Smith ARPS of Richmond and Twickenham Photographic Society and Kingston Camera Club as the best individual image amongst some very strong competition.
Simon took the shot when he was invited to sit in the MCC pavilion at Lords for the one day Nat West Pro40 match between Middlesex and Leicestershire. He was able to sit in the front row, almost in line with the wicket. This gave him a good vantage point, but also meant he was in the players' sight line so he had to be discreet; not moving around, no flash and no autofocus assist light. From this position he had to time the shot as best he could before the bowler ran across his line of view on the follow through, blocking his sight of the batsman. He was keen to try and capture that moment just before impact, a sort of anticipation of the shot, so it seemed like a split second between getting his shot and the bowler getting in the way. A motor drive would not have been appreciated so, needless to say, there were quite a few failed attempts.
Simon used a Nikon D80 with a 70-300mm VR zoom lens. Even with the small sensor crop factor taking the focal length
up to 450mm, the original image (seen right) needed heavy cropping. He felt the bowler was too near the batsman so Simon made a copy of him on a new layer
and slid him across, cloning him away on the base layer. The ball looked as if it was on the end of the keeper's toe, so he moved it up, careful to keep
it in the batman's line of vision. He gave the ball a small amount of motion blur.
Simon didn't have to do much to exposure or levels but he finds the photos on the D80 to be quite soft, Raw or jpeg, so he usually runs the high pass filter at about 4.5 pixels to sharpen. As there was about 20 yards between the player he overcompensated and set the aperture to f14. Having said that, even at this aperture the umpire was a bit soft. This meant Simon had to manually blur the background in Photoshop, using lens blur which looks more realistic for photos than gaussian.
Simon has started taking more and more photos in Raw and more frequently Tiff, but these photos were taken in Nikon's large fine jpeg setting, which considering the amount of enlargement everybody would agree was very acceptable.
The main advantage Simon found with photographing cricket, apart from it being one of the few professional sports where you are permitted to take photos, is that you have all day to get the hang of it.
Well done, Simon, a most deserved win.
FEPS' club entry came third overall in the digital competition. Princes Risborough and XRR had equal top points, with Princes Risborough declared the winner after each club submitted a single photo to the Judge. Amersham won the print competition with a perfect score of 120 points.