By April Gregory

I’m generally a fan of sports but if there’s one I don’t like, it is baseball. I’ve tried to be open-minded about it. I’ve given it a fair chance. Still, I fail to understand why so many people love the game.

As you can imagine, I was not excited when I learned that I would have to photograph baseball during my internship at the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times.

Photographing sports can be challenging. I’ve found that the more familiar you are with the game, the better chance you’ll have of getting a great shot.

What I knew about baseball was this: It seems to be a game where a lot of nothing happens but when something does happen, you’d better have your camera pointed in the right direction and ready, otherwise you’ll miss what few seconds of action there are.

So I was pretty worried about my baseball assignments.

Luckily, I had a great photo editor. I shared my concerns about getting a decent shot. He offered to accompany me to my first game to give me some tips. I still didn’t manage to capture anything worthwhile, and we used one of his photos for the following day’s paper.

Nonetheless, I learned a lot from my editor about techniques for photographing the sport. I felt more confident about capturing a strong image at a future game.

When that assignment came and I got to the field, I couldn’t believe my luck. There weren’t many people watching, so I wouldn’t have to squeeze among the fans to take photos. And the evening lighting was beautiful.

I got my safety shot, a photo of the pitcher throwing the ball. But I really wanted a photo of something other than the pitcher. I moved to another location to get a better angle for some action at the bases. All I had to do was wait.

So I waited.

And waited.

Nothing happened, no action at all. Typical baseball.

Time was running out — I had to get back to the newsroom to submit my photo. But I decided to stay for one more inning.

It wasn’t looking promising, and then – action! I managed to get a shot of a player being tagged out while sliding toward the base.

I felt proud the next day that my credit line was under an exciting photo and not a safety shot of the pitcher.

I slowly became more comfortable with my baseball assignments, thanks to the willingness of my editor to offer guidance.

I didn’t always get the action shot from every game I photographed. Sometimes the pitcher photo was the best I got. But now I know where to set up my camera, what to watch for and which angles look best.

Although I came to terms with photographing baseball, my new knowledge hasn’t changed my opinion of the sport.

It still stinks.

April Gregory was a Summer 2009 Chips Quinn Scholar at the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times. A photojournalism graduate of the University of Montana-Missoula, Gregory was a graphic designer for the Montana Kaimin, her school’s daily newspaper. She is a 2008 graduate of the Freedom Forum’s American Indian Journalism Institute and was a photography intern that summer at the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D. She also worked for an online citizen journalism site, CrowNews.net, for her home community, the Crow Indian Reservation.