Crazy about the blue

I’ve decided that a blue tennis court is my new most favorite thing right now. Last year Recanati had a fine-looking green hard court, this year they painted it blue (and still green on the outs). I like the new color so much that this morning not even the 40 degrees (centigrades!) discouraged me from getting out there and shoot, shoot, shoot.

As one comedian used to say: I like it.

ATP Challenger Recanati

The tournament is midway through, tomorrow the second round will be completed, leaving only 8 players fighting for the title. Among them won’t be Riccardo Ghedin, who put up a good fight today against the number two seed Sergey Stakhovsky. Ghedin is a fun player to watch, he’s very aggressive and serves & volleys pretty often, at least on this surface.

Stakhovsky isn’t boring, either and not the waiting type, even though my picture shows him on the defense, scrambling:

Tomorrow play will star at 6 pm, which kinda sucks because there’s only one good hour of light to shoot at 200 or 400 ISO with high shutter speeds (I like to keep at least 1/1600 with tennis if I can). Of course I can up the ISO and later on the light is beautiful (the magic hour, you know) but harsh and bright do help with action.

Qualifying in Recanati

Amazingly enough, two posts in one day. I almost feel like a blogger :D

Recanati’s ATP Challenger is on this week and I’m there with my beloved camera. Recanati’s the only Italian Challenger played on hard-courts and this year they have been painted a nice combination of green and blue (it used to be all green) which looks fantastic. And very US Open-ish ;)

The weekend saw the qualifiers fighting for a place in the Main Draw, which starts this afternoon. Here’s a few shots, first Morocco’s Rabie Chaki:

Then his “victim” in the Qualifying second round, Italian Thomas Fabbiano:

Young up-and-coming Grigor Dimitrov, who lost in the first round Saturday:

And Nikola Mektic, who ousted him:

And can I just say I hate when players wear a hat that casts a shadow on their faces? Well, I do.

ATP Challenger San Benedetto

Ideally I should have posted this at least a week ago, but my internal clock said it was time to do anything BUT. I also slept a lot. The tournament, btw, went great. The stands were always full for the night sessions and that was a beautiful thing to see. The only snag were the early upsets and retirements: the tournament lost 7 of its 8 seeds in the first two rounds. Things straighten up in the end, though, with the victory of the young and promising Italian Fabio Fognini, the number 1 seed. Here’s a nice (I think) picture of him during the final:

Fognini’s opponent in the final match was Argentina’s Cristian Villagran, one of the nicest guy ever. He also won the Doubles with Stefano Ianni, so he didn’t go home empty handed. On court, he’s a fighter:

I’ll finish with my most favorite tennis shot… ever! The player is Marco Crugnola. The linesman keeping his eyes on the line behind him is what makes the shot, in my very amateurish opinion.

ATP Challenger Barletta

A few chosen shot from the final, won by young Ivo Minar. This Challenger has been pretty prescient in the past (one name above all: Rafael Nadal won it in 2003), so best wishes to Minar to follow that tradition. Minar beat veteran Spaniard Santiago Ventura, tired after a long semifinal against countryman David Marrero and the doubles final, both on Saturday (Ventura won the doubles with Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo). The final wasn't the best match of the tournament but it was entertaining, strong wind notwithstanding. I had a great time finally shooting to my heart's content for the first time in the week. Here's my favorite shot (with a higher dose of pp than usual):

And more of Minar: Ventura favored the drop-shot and Ivo had to scramble forward often enough for me to catch him doing it ;)
He also had a good laugh with the ATP Supervisor Carmelo Di Dio and Chair umpire Gianluca Moscarella at the end, waiting for his trophy. Both he and Santiago are playing Naples this week.

Sunset in Barletta

The ATP Challenger in Barletta is coming to a close. I had very little shooting time but I plan to make it up tomorrow morning for the Singles Final. In the meantime here's a little shot of the sunset behind one of the stands around the center court.

This tournament is played in a beautiful club but it doesn't have a real center court. The tournament could certainly gain a lot by adding a couple of showcourts to the five they already have. On the practical side of things, these courts are really good and well tended, it rained pretty heavily early in the week but the staff always managed to make them ready to play with minimum delays of the schedule. Well done, Barletta!This one above is going to be my new wallpaper for a while, I think. They're Malisse's feet, btw, he lost in the second round. Santiago Ventura and Ivo Minar will battle for the 2009 trophy tomorrow morning.

From China with courtesy

These guys on the left are Yu Xin-Yuan e Zeng Shao Xuan and they're going to be, most probably, China's doubles team at the next Olympics. Xin and Shao have been teaming up forever, they're both from Bejing and are currently the number 1 doubles team in China.

I've first seen them last year in Rimini, then in Recanati, where they reached the doubles final and now, this year, again in Recanati. They travel with their coach Mao Rui and another coach I don't know the name of (sorry man :) ). They're all very polite, very professional and a joy to watch play because they really play doubles, no "parallel singles" with this two like it happens with some many other doubles teams these days.

Unfortunately their run here in Recanati ended tonight in the final: they lost 63 75 versus Benedikt Dorsch and Bjor Phau, two very good german players (Phau in particular has been a top 60 both in singles and doubles). Maybe next year, guys: third time is, after all, the charm ;)

Getting to know you...

It's now been a week since I've started using my brand new Canon 70-200 f4 (the non IS version). To be honest, I was expecting a smoother path: the first few days my keepers' rate had drastically fallen and I was beginning to fear there was actually something wrong with my copy. I'm still not convinced everything is fine, because it doesn't seem as sharp as I was expecting it to be but the last few days things have improve dramatically. As soon as I get home I plan to post a couple of test shots on PotN forum to inquire about the sharpness issue, but so far I'm tending very strongly toward user error to explain the bad results (what a surprise there, uh? ;) ).

If I should make a comparison with my old Tamron (a very unfair comparison: we're talking € 450 of price difference here) the first thing that jumps to my eyes, even in the bad pictures, is the absence of any noticeable chromatic aberration (for noticeable I mean something that's immediately evident, even when you look at the picture at 50 % of its actual resolution). The Tamron was really awful in this department and I'm very, very pleased that my days of correcting bluish edges are over. And then, there's the autofocus. Man, this thing is faaaaaaaaast. Look at the picture here: this was undoubtedly a lucky shot, but with the Tamron it would have been almost impossible to get, it would have never focused fast enough to catch it without serious blurring.

This guy in the pictures, btw, is Horacio Zeballos, a 22 year old Argentinean who's going to play the final here in Recanati at the Guzzini Challenger tomorrow afternoon. Horacio, who has gained his place in the Main Draw by winning his qualifying round, has become a bit of a fan favorite here and tomorrow he will play for the title against Slovenia's Grega Zemlja. The tournament this year had a less than stellar line-up, due to the unfortunate date that has placed it in the same week of Wimbledon's qualies. Hopefully next year, without the Olympics to wreck havoc in the ATP calendar, Recanati will be able to move to its old July date or at least away from a Grand Slam.

Sunshine in Gorizia!

Amazing things are happening... the sun is shining in Gorizia. It's the first time since last friday and finally matches can be played outdoors as they're meant to be played. Not much to rant or muse about other than that, I'll just add a shot fresh from the RAW conversion (eh eh... okay, lame joke).

Rain in Gorizia

I've just discovered that Gorizia is the Seattle of Italy. One of the, if not the, rainiest city in the country. I've been here for six days now and it's been raining everyday, some days with very little interruption. It's really depressing especially since there's a tennis tournament that's supposed to be played here. I've been able to snap just a few pictures, the one on the left is Victoria Larriere, a French player who qualified and then lost this morning against the Italian Alice Balducci in a match they started yesterday afternoon. Amazingly enough the tournament is still mostly on schedule, but that's only because the matches have been moved all over Gorizia's province, in other clubs with indoor clay courts. The weather forecast for tomorrow is decent though, so hopefully I'll be able to shoot more. I'm getting out of practice.

Tennis

It's the main reason I went for a DSLR. Tennis, I mean. I've been in love with the sport since...forever, really, though not so much as a player. I did play when I was a kid but I was - still am - too lazy, basically and I hate to sweat. The only two sports I ever got actively into are swimming and horse-riding. You can't sweat in the water and horses do most of the hard work (actually, horse-riding can be really tiring BUT being with a wonderful animal as a horse makes it all worth it).

So, anyway, I love tennis as a spectator. And most of all I love to take pictures of tennis players. It can be an extremely photogenic sport and, being played outdoor and in daylight most of the time, you don't need an insanely fast lens to get decent results. Getting decent results, in my opinion, isn't hard: groundstrokes can be very predictable and once you've observed a player for a few minutes, you should generally be able to catch nice forehands and backhands with the ball well in the frame almost everytime. Providing you set a fast enough shutter speed (1/800 is the absolute minimum I try to keep it at 1/1250 or more, depending of the light), things will look nice.

Getting great results, on the other hand, is a whole another deal. First of all, your equipment starts to matter. Fast autofocus, large apertures, high fps capability, all of these things will make the difference when you're trying to capture that unpredictable moment or maybe some netplay action. And then there's the skill of the photographer and the sensibility to catch that special moment, not necessarily one of action.

I'm in the first bracket: decent results with the predictable moments. I've realized that I'm noticing the limitations of my current budget telezoom more and more and I think that's a good thing. It should mean I'm getting better. Hopefully :)