Fast Pitch Softball

My one granddaughter Hannah joined a Fast pitch softball league that was started this year. It was no small transition as she went from Coach slow pitch to machine fast pitch (40mph).



Besides the speed of the pitch the other major difference was that every batter got up to 5 pitches. The only way to strike out was not get a hit with one of your 5 pitches.



Much to my surprise there were quite a few hits in the game I attended.

Study in Bronze (Joseph and Child Jesus)

I posted a winter picture of this statue of Joseph playing with a very young Jesus before. This time I thought I'd come back and spend some more time with it.



This next one is my favorite of the bunch.



The statue is located outside of St. Joseph Catholic church in Wapakonetta.











For some reason I have trouble capturing the color of bronze consistently through all the images.

Applefest 2009 People Pics

While attending this years Applefest, I took a few people pictures some candid and some not so candid. Pictured above are my son Tony and his girlfriend Ashley.



Here's another one of Tony helping out at the Dunk-Tank.



I just love the blue eyes of Trinity, My nephews daughter, peaking out from behind the mask she made.

I missed the contest but caught this young man still hula-hooping afterwards.



I thought this picture of the vendor standing in her sea of mums made for colorful shot.



This one I will simply title King of the Skateboard.



I'm not sure what this guys story is, but I guess he didn't what his picture taken in all his fancy dress.



My favorite picture of the day was this one I captured of a UC Bearcat Fan.



The crops are little tighter than I like on some of these but I was walking around with my Canon 100mm lens.

Flag Football

Here are a few shots from my Grandson's Flag Football game.



That's my grandson Evan chasing down the runner.



Their QB was poised in the pocket.



And had a good throwing stance.

This last picture of one of the staff was a candid shot that would have benefited greatly from some fill flash from my speadlite had I had it on.



Every time I go to something like this it makes me wish I was a kid again.

HDR Crucifixion Statue St. Bernard

I took this picture quite sometime ago with the thought of seeing what I could do with HDR in PhotoShop CS3.

I used these four exposures to create the above image. I had to tweak the overall exposure a little afterwords but this is pretty much what I got on auto pilot.






I shot these in RAW. I really didn't have a shot that was slightly overexposed so I am going to try again using one Raw Image to create one over and one underexposed and try and combined them.

This is the result of that process. It was a more involved process than the first but I got a little more detail out of the window.



But the picture looks grainy. Oh well I guess I will just have to practice some more.

Between The Fences

The 2009 Applefest is adding a new category to their Photo Contest called Between the Fences. This is in conjunction with the Historical Society that has been chosen to host a Smithsonian traveling exhibit by the same name.



The flier goes on to explain -- Between the Fences examines the multiple meanings behind the everyday icon. Whether made of split rails, decorative white pickets, or tall chain link, a fence conveys information abut the people who built it, how they view and use their property, and the nature of their relations with their neighbors.



It further goes on to say -- Fences are not always tangible objects. As a community, we may build fences between ourselves and others. These division my be of race, culture, religion or politics....



I thought it was a very interesting challenge. So I thought I'd give it a try. These are my first three attempts. The chain link is my favorite of the three.