Baseball is simultaneously one of the fastest and slowest sports ever. It often involves a lot of standing around by the players but the ball itself is moving faster than pretty much anything in any other sport. Due to this if you want to capture the ball itself in plays, specifically in pitching and batting, you will need to have a very high shutter speed. An interesting aspect when shooting baseball and considering your shutter speed is deciding whether or not you want to freeze the ball. Your shutter speed can sometime be so high, such as 1/6000 plus, and you will be shooting the batter for example and end up with odd looking shots where the ball is just “hanging” in the air. Freezing the ball in the “correct” spot is also important. Sometimes this works and sometimes it does not. Sometimes you’re too early. sometimes you’re too late, and sometimes you get it just right.

A technique that I had to learn while shooting baseball was shooting through a chain link fence. I have only photographed baseball at the Seton Hall University field and much of the field is surrounded by a high fence, there is one area left of Seton Halls dugout where there is a lower fence you can shoot over however it is a little far from the batters and not ideal for right handed batter. Shooting through a fence sounds much worse than it actually is. I used the 70-200mm to shoot the whole game and luckily I have a lens hood for it which i rested lightly against the fence so I was close as possible without damaging my lens and then was able to take pictures. If you zoom in you will most likely eliminate any part of the fence that may be in your shot and then once you’ve focused on your subject, the fence is so close to you and so thin that it practically disappears. Of course there is always the fear in baseball as a spectator if getting bit by a stray ball and that feeling is only exacerbated by the fact you are holding a $2000 plus piece of glass in front of your face. However, the odds of actually being hit are so low and you just need to stay aware of what is going and pay attention to the game, another photographer gave me the tip for when shooting the the fence to stand near a pole to save yourself from a black eye. Some editing in post will also help remove any haziness in the shot created by the fence, below are all shots that were taken through a fence.

Moving around to get different angles on the field is a pretty good idea if possible. For example, although there are more right handed batters, there are some lefties that you will need to switch sides for if you want to get a shot of the front of the, like in the first two images above. Same goes for pitchers.

My setting for shooting baseball are usually a shutter speed of at least 1/1600 and up, an f/stop of 2.8, an ISO ranging from 1000-3200 depending on the time of day, white balance set to auto or daylight again depending on the day, auto focus set to AI Servo, and High Speed Continuous shooting.