Polo (the horse kind!)

Had tobe a good alumni and cheer onCal Poly last weekend as they played Stanford at the Horsepark at Woodside (arena polo, not field). I played polo for 3 years in college, but haven't had the opportunity to take pics until now. I'm pretty disappointed with the action shots - I really could have used the 100-400mm, but all I have in my bag is the 70-200 f/4. Also, for some reason I tried shooting on ISO 200 because the light was pretty good to start with, but I think I could have benefited from ISO 400. Any thoughts appreciated!


Canon 20D, 70-200mm f/4 non-IS, all handheld, post processing in CS3.


Aperture priority, f/6.3 1/1600 ISO 200 184mm - probably would have worked a lot better as a horizontal shot...


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Aperture priority, f/6.3 1/500 ISO 200 188mm


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Aperture priority, f/6.3 1/640 ISO 200 200mm


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Aperture priority, f/6.3 1/640 ISO 200 100mm - almost perfect timing on the horse and rider, but I kind of wish it wasn't backlit so there wasmore detail in the horse...Did a lot of retouching on this one to remove the referee from behind this horse and rider.


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Thanks for your thoughts!

Hey, Jessica. I like these images--but I feel a lot of them are a bit cramped--don't be afraid to back out a bit ;) #1 is a good example of what I mean. The action is way too tight making the scene seem uncomfortable. #2 has potential to be a great shot, but the horse to the far left being cut off takes away from the composition, IMO. #3 is composed very nicely. #4 is a great shot, but try to leave room for the subject to 'move' into. Obviously you may have your reasons for cropping/shooting as you did and if so please feel free to disregard what I've said. Keep shooting ;)


-Matt

they're all good pictures.. there's nothing wrong with the composition-- each shot is obviously what you were going for, so therefore i don't believe in any artistic critique.


from a purely technical perspective, however.. you ought to consider a slightly higher exposure. the second picture in particular would lose a lot of detail in printed form.. there's nothing wrong with giving yourself a little extra headroom, especially as you can tweak it in post. that was a lesson i learned the hard way.

Hey, here are my thoughts:


#1 is well exposed but should have been horizontal as you said.


#2 is a bit under exposed, but it's noting you can't fix with post processing.


#3 I like it.


#4 I like it too. I prefer if it could be horizontal though, but it's obvious why this one is vertical - because of this polo racquet the rider has in her hand.

I love the third one so much. It's a nice composition and it works for me.

Great pictures of a great college! I used to live in templeton near SLO....GREAT place...and pictures, of course =)