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Play ball!

As a weddings and portraits photographer, I don’t have an opportunity all that often to photograph sports. This comes much to the chagrin of my husband, who is a sports reporter for The Baltimore Sun and likes to pester me about why I never want to photograph what he’s interested in. I always figured that I would refine my sports shooting techniques when our future children take up lacrosse or soccer or football. But until then, I told him, he’ll find me stalking the side aisles of a church rather than the sidelines of a field or running around a ballroom rather than the stands of a stadium.

That is until now.

I recently spent a sweaty — but wonderfully fun — afternoon shooting the 30th Anniversary Baseball All-Star Game between Baltimore and its sister city of Kawasaki, Japan. It was really enjoyable to capture not only some of the more exciting game moments — calls at home plate, a grand slam, etc. — but also the camaraderie of the teams and the enjoyment of the fans. I also had a lot of fun translating my love of photographing details — usually employed on bouquets, wedding rings and the like — into baseball photography. That meant close-ups of hats, a bucket of balls and the medals that players were awarded at the end of the game.

Here are some of my favorites:

A play at the plate…

And he’s safe.

Like I mentioned, it was really, really, really hot. So kids in the stands did just about everything to try to stay cool, sitting under towels and umbrellas, gulping down water and happily accepting the free frozen mango treats from Rita’s Water Ice.

So, at the end of the game, one of the Japanese players approached a Baltimore player to see if he wanted to swap batting gloves. They did. A few moments later, …

one of the Baltimore players approached the Kawasaki team with a bat to see if anyone wanted to trade bats. I guess the Japanese team didn’t want to part with their hot bats, given the lopsided results on the scoreboard!

Congratulations to both teams. It was a lot of fun to spend the afternoon with you. I hope I have the opportunity to photograph future games, particularly when they’re played in Japan!