Australian scrum half. Under 20's Rugby World Championships Wales 2008

by Ronnie Sutcliffe
(Newport Wales UK)

I've tweaked this shot with CS3 so I could get more separation of the player from the background...

I like the concentration level on his face, given that he is moving very quickly......opinions please

Thanks

R


Personally, I like it! It's a great action shot and neatly placed in the frame.

If I were to be picky I would suggest leaving more space on the right of the photo (so that the scrum half is placed on the left of the scene).

The only other thing (and this is really, really picky) is that a better lens would have got the nice blurry background you were trying to achieve without resorting to image editing. And by the way, aiming for a sharp subject with a blurred background was definitely the right thing to do here.

The difference between a good lens and editing using Photoshop is that with a lens the blur gets progressive. In other words, the guy on the left of the photo would be slightly blurred, the advertising hoarding would be a bit more blurred (because it is further away) and the spectators would be even more blurred.

This type of appealing blur even has a name - bokeh. A lens can be described as having good bokeh if the background blurs nicely away in an appealing manner (often with nice catchlights).

Recreating this in Photoshop is almost impossible, but you know what - most people wouldn't even notice!

Thanks for the submission Ronnie; and I've moveed it to this part of the site as you mentioned you are after opinions. Hope that's ok.

Darrell.