Photo: The Abandoned Baseball

[1]

The game is over, and the ball, forgotten. I found this on the ground outside the baseball field at the park. I moved it to where the grass was more brown (no one waters it), laid in the dirt, and shot this. I used a really large aperture — F1.6, so just the front of the baseball would be in focus, but nothing else, so the subject would seem singled out. I couldn’t even go down to F1.4, because I was maxing out with a 1/4000 second shutter speed.

Canon Rebel XTi [2], EF 50mm 1:1.4 [3], 1/4000, F1.6, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-06-05T16:08:38-04, 20080605-200838rxt

Source image [4]. Fun editing here. I cloned out the sky in the back, added contrast, and darkened a lot, for a (you guessed it) dark look. Before doing this, I used highlight recovery in Adobe Camera RAW, and burned in the highlight on the ball. It was a bit over-exposed, but only a little detail is lost.

Free high-res stock image [5].