Hockey
2009 Holiday Special Part 6
Here, we look at a field sports, hockey! To me, hockey bears quite some resemblance to soccer. First, the size of the field and number of players. Another thing common in photos of both sports is that you see "things" coming out from the shoes of the players..
In hockey, the "thing" is actually water. I doubt that most people including me knows that water is bring sprayed onto the pitch prior to the game starting, creating this effect. It's somehow similar to soccer when you see those black stuff which is "sand" afrom artificial pitch. You can see quite a bit of water here as the player firms his feet to block a ball.
Another thing worthy to mention is that it really hurts when the ball hits you. Throughout the game, you can hear lound and sharp sounds whenever the ball hits the edges of the field which is being fenced up. And the players really smack the dense ball hard so dodge if the ball comes in your way!
Again, we can see how hard the ball can get when it hits you from the way the goalkeeper is "dressed". The thick knee guard says it all~
We end off with a rather interesting scene here. Conclusion from the photo: It hurts when the ball hits, especially at the wrong spot!
Today, we look at another ball game, volleyball~! It's another game I am not familiar with but there mainly two types of action you always see in a volleyball game.
First, we have the one of the most signature moves that we see in volleyball matches which is diving to save the ball. During this match i shot, they seldom dive probably cuz it can get quite painful with the wooden floor. It's more common in beach volleyball where the sand floor is kinder.
Another classic manuveur is smacking the ball near the net. As players are in closer proximity, this is the time when emotions run high and you can see a variety of expressions on players faces. 
In this next part of the sports special, we move away from racket sports and look at netball. Frankly, I know nuts about netball. My first impressions about netball is that it involves a lot of physical contact, somewhat like basketball. In principle, you can shoot netball like you are shooting basketball with the main difference being that you bounce the ball in one and you toss the ball around in the other.
Anw, shooting this netball match was not easy, given the lousy lighting conditions. You have to go up to ISO3200 to only get a decent shutter speed [Note: Decent not equal good=(] I guess that pre-focusing can help quite a bit in such situations as focusing can get a bit haywired in dim conditions like this. There are other ways to work around it too.;)
Talking about glam or unglam actually leads to a very important thing in sports: Style! Most seasoned players, in fact all, play with a certain style, patterns that you can observe over time if you are sharp enough.. Players often move in a similar manner as they execute their moves. For example, our lady above loves to do taiji swordplay when she returns a drop shot~ Knowing these patterns can prove to be useful~ More to be said in later parts!
Let's start off this section with the sports that has the fastest ball on Earth: Tennis! I remembered that when I first started photography and later got exposed to DSLR, I asked my senior when will we be shooting at 1/8000th of a sec, the fastest setting on the camera? He told me i) You shoot a rocket takeoff (probably not in sg-_-) ii) a flying tennis ball! I was quickly reminded of this as I entered the Tennis court and many ppl tell me not to stand anywhere where the ball has a high chance to hit you~ (And I dun wan to try getting hit either)
Generally, many beginning sports shooter will first try to shoot the players serving as it is highly predictable. For tennis, players tend to stretch high and serve the ball, reason simply is to get maximum reach~ And it seems that players make the most effort (strength-wise and the 'urgh' sound i always hear) during serving as compared to other times where more agility is required. 
Talking about strength, I believe that among racket sports, Tennis players have the most strength as it simply requires quite some effort to drive a ball that's not light at all. So you always see your favourite Tennis players with very toned muscles.. And these muscles simply strain up when they return a ball as we can see above~
Soccer...
