Buerhle vs Santana

The "Dog Days of Summer" are here early this year! OK, not quite. The Chicago White Sox had their annual "Dog Day" today. It's a nice little PR thing they do where they let 500 fans bring their dogs to the Cell, parade around the field before the game, and sit in the bleachers with them during the game.



But that wasn't really the main event. The main event of the night was the highly anticipated pitching matchup of Minnesota's Johan Santana vs Chicago's Mark Buerhle. Matching two of the best pitchers in all of baseball is great for TV, and great for the fans, but bad when it comes to photos. Why? Because everyone pops out or strikes out. So there's no action, other than pitchers pitching, and batters swinging. It's games like these where we have to really start looking out for emotion/frustration.



Another thing we can do is get a bit gimmicky. Since pitching was the story of the game (well, at least while Buerhle and Santana were in the game), why not jazz things up a bit? Most people probably think this is a photoshop trick, but it's not. I slowed the shutter down from the usual 1/1000 sec to 1/80 sec. I also panned the camera along with the pitcher's forward movement. Doing so keeps the pitcher's face in focus, while motion blurring everything else. Pretty cool huh?