[clackers]

Good morning, all. I think you know I live in a tough neighbourhood, there are a lot of unsavoury things going on.

I was in a cafe and saw two of my local shop owners had met for a coffee, and overheard one saying to the other, 'I was sorry to hear about the fire at your place last week.'

The other said, 'Ssh - not so loud. That's next week.'

I don't want all that negativity to come inside my home. I reassured my wife that for example, she should embrace her mistakes.

That's when she gave me a big hug.

This week I want to talk about ball placement in a sports photo.

For your standard photos, you should be putting yourself in a predicted position between the ball and the player, that way you've already got their face in the frame. In soccer, that may be up and down the left touch line to a right footed midfielder.

At other times, the ball positioning may be more important. The ball very close to the bat in baseball or cricket is what you can strive for for one type of shot, it shows unity.

In other shots like the one below with the K-1 and the Tamron 70-200 f2.8, it's actually the spacing between the elements in the picture that matters.

A ball far away from the player after being hit, thrown or kicked is depicting energy release, an approaching ball or the downward swing of a golf club depicts anticipation.

You can switch to JPG to increase your frame rate to generate options, and I've even shot with a Sony A9 II 'spraying and praying' at 20 frames per second, but the truth is that in sports there's a lot of repetition and you'll have many goes at getting different compositions from the participants. In tennis, as just one example, each backhand really can look like every other backhand, you can can fill your SD card with redundant shots. The Sony rep on the day (a surf shoot) said he dialled the frame rate down to be practical.

To finish with this week, there's the story of the man who worked for the post office processing all the mail with illegible addresses.

One day he came across a letter addressed to God.

It read: "Dear God, I am an 83 year old widow and yesterday someone stole my purse with $100 in it - all the money I had until my next pension payment. Sunday is Christmas and without that money I have nothing to buy food with. You are my only hope. Sincerely, Edna"

The postal worker was touched and showed the letter to his colleagues who all contributed a few dollars. By the time he'd done the rounds he had $96, which they sent to Edna.

A few days later, another letter came from the same lady.

It read: "Dear God. How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? By the way, there was $4 missing. I think it might have been those pr&cks at the post office."

Find the rest of the series here: Clackers' Beginners Tips (Collected) - PentaxForums.com