Baseball Multiple Exposure: Feb. 17

Spencer Herlong speaking, a sports photographer for the DTH. I shot the image of Kent Emanuel at the UNC’s opening day baseball game against Seton Hall on Friday, February 15. I used the camera multiple exposure setting to take 3 images consecutively and overlay the images into one image.

For multiple exposure images you can take either two or three images and have the camera overlay them. I chose three here because I felt like the pitching motion had three distinct parts: the wind-up, the cock back and the release. I tried several times before getting the timing down. Because the pictures have to be consecutive shots in the camera, you have to time your shutter to fire exactly when you want. If you shoot too quickly you will not get all three of the distinct motions you want. If you fire too slowly, then you will miss the action completely.

After playing around with the timing, I had to work on stabilization. I only had a monopod, which creates one-direction of stabilization. I needed the camera to be in the exact same place during the three images or else the backgrounds would be overlaid and would look bad. After figuring out a way to get the camera as still as possible, I took multiple sequences of Emanuel pitching and got a couple of good takes. I also had to preset my focus and have a decent depth-of-field to make sure the pitcher stayed in focus during the whole pitching motion. I had to present my focus because I could not move my camera to track my subject.

I went back to the next game against Seton Hall on Sunday, February 17 and tried the technique again, but this time I used a tripod to give me the maximum amount of stability. In addition to looking over my images from the previous take, I found the settings and camera placement that would give me the best image.

I photographed Benton Moss the second time around, and I had some improvements in stability. And because Benton Moss was a right-handed pitcher I moved to the other side of the field and discovered that my pictures turned out better when I shot my subject on a dark background. This leads me to believe that if I were to do this again at night my subject might pop out of the background a little more.

After shooting the pitcher I wanted to change my subject and tried to take pictures of base runners using the same technique. I took a multiple exposure image of Chaz Frank sliding back to first base. This was much harder because you only get a couple of tries to do this. Again I set my focus and waited for him to slide back to first. The image is a little more shaky and needs some improvement, but gets the point across.

I first saw images like this from professional photographer Mark J. Rebilas, who photographs for US Presswire (USA Today Images) and also runs his own sports photography blog.