John Larson, FPSA, MPSA2  


Volleyball Cheerleaders by John Larson, FPSA, MPSA2

November 2024 - Volleyball Cheerleaders

About the Image(s)

My wife Carolyn and I have season tickets to football and men’s and women’s basketball for Penn State. That give use free admission to most of the other sporting events at the college, volleyball being one of them. This image was taken during a women’s volleyball game (they are in the top ten nationally) and they won against Michigan. The cheerleaders are also part of the attraction and I thought this image was better in black and white because it showed fewer distractions.
Camera Settings:
Creation Date: 1030/2024 Camera: Canon, Camera Model: Canon EOS R6, Shutter Speed: 1/1600, Aperture: f/3.2, ISO 4000, Lens 80 ??“ 200 f.2.8 @ 70mm
Post processing:
Normal LR and PS adjustments. The. used Photo AI for Denoise and Sharpening. To convert to B&W I duplicated the layer, used the overlay blending mode, added a black and white adjustment layer and then adjusted the opacity of the middle layer to give the amount of darkness that I wanted.


This round’s discussion is now closed!
6 comments posted




Robin Mellor   Robin Mellor
The quality of the shot is really good, but the figures of the (?) cheerleaders merge too much into the crowd behind. But then I'm not fond of sport and don't understand cheerleading, at all. Sorry - a bit bah humbug from me.   Posted: 11/11/2024 10:05:53



Gerard Blair   Gerard Blair
John,
I see nicely captured tones, and crisp focus (surprising considering one of the women is in flight!). I am interested in the way clarity is maintained even at such high ISO setting: clearly it enables the high shutter speed in what I assume is poor lighting conditions, but I am surprised not to see more noise. (?)

The composition seems to me to lack a subject. My eye is actually drawn to the men's white chests and thus is swept, left to right, out of the image. My preference would be to crop so as to designate the floating woman as the subject (I think her expression and posture support this choice), thus:   Posted: 11/11/2024 18:51:16
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Peter Elliston   Peter Elliston
John
This was a difficult subject to take given your vantage point and the considerable background distractions. But you have caught a good moment and your decision to convert to mono was the right one. But I agree with Gerard - there are too many things in the image and Gerard's crop does help to resolve that. If you use the remove tool in Photoshop it would be helpful to take out the First Aid sign in the background and possibly the man in the white shirt top right behind the cheerleader with her raised arms. But even so, this still leaves quite a lot distractions.   Posted: 11/12/2024 16:40:07



Barbara Asacker   Barbara Asacker
Hi John,
You caught the action with nice sharp details. Good tonal variation. I agree with the others that there are distractions. I removed the first aid sign and man in the white shirt and cropped it per Peter's and Gerard's suggestions. I also darkened the background thus highlighting the cheerleaders using the radial gradient.   Posted: 11/12/2024 17:30:55
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Kathleen McCrary   Kathleen McCrary
John--I agree with Gerard's crop although it's a tough subject with all the background business. I think it would be hard to find a really good way to show these cheerleaders in this environment. The guys holding them up are an important element but we don't see their faces so they seem like clutter. Perhaps choosing a single cheerleader and her "handler" would have been useful.   Posted: 11/16/2024 20:01:23



John Larson   John Larson
I appreciate all the comments. I guess I should have submitted another image. I was attempting to submit this image which I was submitting in my PJ study groups in which most of the things you all suggested are not allowed. I will consider all your suggestions and perhaps uses them to make this into a true PID image. Thanks.   Posted: 11/17/2024 23:44:15