As an enthusiastic hobby photographer, I frequently visit the Digital Photography School website for advice and inspiration. Yesterday, pro photographer Jim Bryant posted a tutorial that brings together my two favorite pastimes: How to photograph baseball

Baseball is a visual feast or famine game. If the pitcher is really great, there’s nothing to shoot. If both teams are better at offense than defense you’ll wind through a lot of frames rapidly.

By photographers’ standards, these are slow games. The majority of most games are as visually exciting as watching grass grow. However, there are brief moments of amazing athletic ability and severe collisions. Because this window is so tight (and the extremely-hard, fast-moving balls [and bats] that seem to have photographers magnets in them), it’s important to pay close attention during the entire game. Otherwise you miss the shot and/or wake up in the hospital covered in blood.

This tutorial is really long and extensive and is written with the casual fan or even the baseball ignorant in mind, but there are some very helpful tips and quite a few amazing pictures to be found. So if you want to bring your camera to the ballpark, make sure to check it out first. And if you manage to take a few nice shots, let us know and we may post them here.

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