James Venes

The past couple months have been mostly taken up by finalizing a home purchase and moving and I’m getting settled in enough that I can go back out and do some games. Shooting a lot of stuff in Sacramento and Stockton is nice when I’m only about 20 minutes from Sacramento and 40 minutes from Stockton compared to about two hours and one hour respectively, depending on traffic.

I got back out to Sacramento on the 11th then did a game in Stockton on the 17th followed by another in Sacramento the next night as I work on getting more used to night games. After covering the first game I started thinking more about getting a little extra zoom. Before I got the new camera and lens for it, I’d been using one that went up to 300mm but the problem was its aperture settings were nowhere near good enough to shoot at night (about f5.6 when at full zoom). Now I have one that’s f2.8 but it’s only 200mm and I’ve been noticing it’s not quite enough for me when it comes to cropping to a larger part of the image for a better-looking result.

I started looking at 300-400mm lenses with f2.8 but they’re definitely expensive. Rather than plunking down a few thousand on one (I’ve been spending more than enough lately getting necessary items for the house) I decided to try a 1.4x teleconverter Nikon puts out. So far I’m pretty happy with it, though having to go down a full stop to f4.0 does make for some differences in how I can shoot once night sets in. It’s a fair tradeoff, though.

Before getting into the next bit of news, three galleries:

6/11/09: Tacoma Rainiers at Sacramento River Cats:  From Raley Field in Sacramento. The Rainiers won, 6-4. Brad Nelson tied the game with a 3-run homer in the 8th inning and two-out singles in the 9th by Mike Carp and Mike Morse was enough to overcome an early 4-1 deficit. Travis Buck hit a solo homer and had a sacrifice fly and Danny Putnam had a 2-run homer to account for Sacramento’s runs. Andrew Baldwin went 7 innings for Tacoma and pitched well aside from the homers while James Simmons worked 5 for the River Cats before leaving with tightness in his back.

6/17/09: Modesto Nuts at Stockton Ports:  From Banner Island Ballpark in Stockton. The Nuts won, 6-2. Connor Graham pitched 6 2/3 shutout innings for the win, allowing just 4 hits while walking 4 and striking out 7. Tyson Ross was undone by a 5-run 6th, giving up 6 runs on 9 hits with a walk and 4 strikeouts in 5 1/3. Home runs were hit by Modesto’s Jay Cox and Stockton’s Jemile Weeks, who has at least one hit in all 18 games so far this season. Brian Rike drove in 3 of Modesto’s 6 runs.

6/18/09: Salt Lake Bees at Sacramento River Cats:  From Raley Field in Sacramento. The River Cats won, 9-0. Cliff Pennington’s 3-run triple in the 7th broke open a 1-0 game and the River Cats scored a total of 8 runs in the last 2 innings to turn it into a blowout. Gio Gonzalez worked 5 1/3 innings, allowing just 4 hits and a walk while striking out 10. Dan Denham pitched 6+ for the Bees but left with the bases loaded before the bullpen failed to limit the damage. Eric Munson’s solo homer was the only run until late in the game. Pennington finished with 4 RBI while Travis Buck, Munson and Aaron Cunningham had 2 hits apiece for Sacramento. Brandon Wood was the only Salt Lake batter with multiple hits, also getting a pair.

Something else I’ve started playing around with are animated gifs. Of course they’re nothing like video with 30-60 frames per second, but with a camera that lets me shoot about 10 fps it can be fun messing around with throwing a sequence together and seeing how it comes out to get a better look at someone’s pitching motion or a stolen base.  Here are a few examples:

* Salt Lake’s Howie Kendrick tags out Sacramento’s Cliff Pennington
* Sacramento’s Gio Gonzalez from the first base side
* Sacramento’s Gio Gonzalez from behind the plate
* Salt Lake’s Dan Denham from the third base side
* Stockton’s Tyson Ross from the third base side

Some talk has surfaced among A’s fans about the delivery Ross has ever since he was drafted last year and just looking at one or two still shots doesn’t tell the story the same as a video or animation like this does. With the camera what it is, I can play around with things like this a lot more and turn it into another part of what I do.

As for the actual news, I’ve got credentials lined up for three minor league All-Star Games in the next month:

* June 23: High-A All-Star Game in Lake Elsinore, CA (California League vs. Carolina League)
* July 1: Double-A All-Star Game in Frisco, TX (Texas League North vs. Texas League South)
* July 15: Triple-A All-Star Game in Portland, OR (Pacific Coast League vs. International League)

The opportunity to cover a few of these is a good one, especially with the chance for some of the photos to see further exposure online and in print. It’s also just a lot of fun to be around things like this. I’ve been to both ballparks in Lake Elsinore and Portland but the one in Frisco will be a first and from everything I’ve seen it’s a beautiful ballpark. You’ll see what I mean. I’ll also be close enough to go watch a game or two in Arlington and knock one more MLB ballpark off my list. Midland (the Oakland affiliate in the Texas League) is too far to go to this time around but about 10 players from the team will be in the All-Star Game anyway.

The next month will be pretty busy but that’s just fine with me.