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Admission - When I was a kid, I dreamed of growing up to be the catcher for the Red Sox. In my mind, I was going to get drafted by the Sox, play a couple of years in the minors and be called up just about the time that Carlton Fisk (who was NEVER going to leave and go to the White Sox) was getting ready to hang up his spikes. In retrospect, I probably should have come up with a 'Plan B'. A freak growth spurt (you don't see many 6'3" 150 lb. catchers, as I was at the time) ended my career as a catcher and later a series of injuries (the last of which was a fractured orbital socket from a fastball to the face) ended my playing days for good.
But over the years, at any given time, my favorite player in baseball was less likely to be a specific individual and more likely to be whoever was catching for the Red Sox. That includes Rich Gedman, Tony Pena and even Roger LaFrancois, who endured eight long years in the minors to make it to the majors and get 10 at-bats for the Sox in '82. When the Sox got Tek from the Seattle Mariners (along with Derek Lowe in exchange for the much-maligned Heathcliff Slocumb, one of the great trades of the Dan Duquette era), I didn't know who he was but it didn't take long for me to realize that he's the player I dreamed of being when I was a kid.
Varitek's teams have been winners wherever he has played. He's played in the Little League World Series, the Florida High School State Championship, the College World Series, the Olympics, the WBC and 2 MLB World Series as well. He's known as one of the best handlers of pitchers in the game and it's no coincidence that he has been behind the plate for a MLB-record four no-hitters. Oh, and if Curt Schilling hadn't shaken him off with two outs in the ninth inning of a game against the A's in '07, he might have five no-hitters to his credit.
When I took this series of pictures, Varitek was warming up in the bullpen for an early-April game against the A's. Before Jon Lester started loosening up, Tek was down there wearing his small training mitt, and somebody was throwing him pitch after pitch in the dirt. Left, middle, right, left, middle, right, over and over. It really struck me that after 1300+ games behind the plate, this multiple-time All-Star and Gold Glove winner was down there in the bullpen with seemingly nobody watching but me, practicing the basic fundamentals over and over as though he were a rookie who was trying to make the team. But I guess that's why he has the track record that he does while other catchers are still trying to backhand pitches in the dirt to their right. And young, promising pitchers like Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz owe much of their success to the careful guidance he has given them.
About a week and a half later, I was watching a Sox-Yankees game and Jonathon Papelbon was pitching to Mark Texeira with the go-ahead run at third base. Papelbon threw a 59-foot splitter that bounced next to the plate. Tek slid over, elbows out, glove down, blocked the pitch. Fundamentally perfect, body square to the pitch, the ball right in front of him. The runner had to hold at third, no drama, no worries. But it made me smile to remember watching him in the bullpen 10 days before, practicing that very play over and over and over so he could make that same play in the 9th inning of a game against the Yankees with the go-ahead run at third base. I'm sure most people will remember Jason Bay's 2-out, 2-run homer off Mariano Rivera in the 9th to tie the game, then Kevin Youkilis hitting a walk-off, extra-inning bomb to win it. But my favorite play of the game was a Papelbon splitter in the dirt that amounted to exactly nothing.
sony nex-5 // cv nokton 50mm f/1.1 // testing manual focus and depth of field with the nex-5 and 50mm f/1.1 combination // www.yoctoblot.com
Long-time chum & fellow flickrite "mountainmike1" popped up from Devon for a few days this week.
We only got out on one day & the weather wasn't winning any prizes.
There were one or two bright spots, unfortunately none of them occurred during our time at Ashness Jetty.
The "classic" shot, done by every man & his dog, wasn't really achieveable in the gloom, so here's a so-called "arty" shot instead.
Pretend it is selective focus. It was all in focus while being eaten but wine consumed may have caused the camera focus situation. Frenched green beans, USA corn, roasted potatoes from someplace and tasty BC Sockeye salmon off the BBQ.
Week 10 - Vision : Selective color
Girly pink...
I hesitated a lot between this picture and a totally different one (see comments). I spent a lot of time editing the second one, but this one seems more suited for the Vision catgeory.
The alernate version : ici
This is a sample using the "selective focus" mode on the Samsung Galaxy S9 phone. I focused just below his nose which came out really sharp while everything else is blurry. Nice, but it does not save RAW image files in this mode - only jpeg. Thus there is a good amount of artifacts due to the lower quality.
Edit: To explain it more fully, once the photo is taken on the phone, the focus can be adjusted after-the-fact and saved as a new image. So, I could go into it now and make both fore and background sharp, or make the background focus/the cat blurry. Kind of an interesting feature!
From the GoodGuy's HotRod Nationals summer 2007. 7 RAW exposures tonemapped in PhotoMatix, then mono channel mixed in Photoshop and finally selective erasure to let the color through.
Explore #318 on Thursday, December 13, 2007
#HongKong #Protest #AntiExtraditionBill
#MongKok
#FiveDemandsNotOneLess #Chinazi
Only shops of China related business being attacked by protesters.
Assignment: Selective Focus
Well, this is not what I envisioned. I am okay with the dof I used, but I really struggled with an interesting composition. In the end, I got tired of setting up the dominoes again when I inadvertently knocked them down, so went with what I had :)
Mon. the 23rd and walkabout Waterfront over Hawthorne Bridge and back across Burnside Bridge.
D90...55-200vr.
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Selective coloring long exposure of a double ice whiskey shot on the table, taken with FUJIFILM GFX50S + GF120mm F4 R LM OIS WR Macro at 4sec., F8, ISO 100