FINALLY! It's baseball season! And I'm pretty sure that THIS is going to be our year, Cubs fans!
A day I've been excitedly anticipating through the long harsh winter in Chi-beria... Cubs home opener was last Friday, and I was more than happy to allot one of my coveted vacation days to be in attendance.
Those filthy south-siders opened on Monday with much better weather, but even with the howling wind, threat of rain, and frigid temps, Wrigleyville was hopping.
No one likes the score on that board, but it's a welcomed sight to see baseball either way.
Oh how delicious to have 312 beer from the aisle vendors!
After hypothermia started setting in on my fingers, we moved inside to the Stadium Club to warm up...
In recognizing that the Cubs are way cooler than the Cards, my best friend flew in from St Louis for the game. She was happy to don Cubs gear, drink Miller Light instead of Bud, and even posed with the (unofficial and uncondoned) Cubbie Bear mascot later in the day.
Photography
I carefully lugged my Nikon D7000 to the game to capture the day and even endured the longer "bag check" line to have my camera bag inspected. I didn't really want to deal with a huge lens all day, so I selected the 55 mm f/1.8 prime lens which is compact and pretty universal. Overcast days like this one are usually pretty easy to shoot. You usually have enough available light to allow for full aperture range. As you can see from the differences in the depth of field in the different photos, I used both ends of my aperture. Remember- depth of field is the amount of blur to the part of the photo not in focus.When shooting the field, I wanted as much as possible to be in focus, so I set the aperture quite high (meaning smaller hole). In contrast, when photographing people, I wanted the people to be the focus with the background more blurred, so I dialed down the aperture (opened the hole wider). With every change in the diameter of the aperture, you need to accommodate for the different amount of light let in by equally adjusting your shutter speed.
A quick note on composition to round this out- Check out the difference in the last two photos. The photo subjects are standing in the exact same spot in both photos, as is the photographer. The camera has the exact same settings too. So what's the difference in these two photos? The composition! I composed the photo of just Mollie with the slightest of an angle up to get the marquee in the background. I was careful to not shoot at such an angle that it would be unflattering (this angle is typically VERY bad for women!). This gave an appearance that the photo was being taken at eye level, but still had a pleasing background. For the second photo that I'm in, I handed the camera off to a non-photographer, who happens to be about 8 inches taller than the two of us. While this downward angle is usually more forgiving for the subjects, you can see the composition is less pleasing. Our heads are in line with the crown, instead of in the marquee. Certainly not something you can complain about to a kind person who offers to man your camera- just something worth noting!