Well it's here at last...The WAFL season has started, every club with a sense of optimism and purpose determined to stay at the right end of the ladder.  A 2 game first week (If someone could explain that to me i'd be grateful) saw Subiaco show they're keen win one more game than last year with the 2011 Grand Finalists beating West Perth Falcons and the Perth Demons taking it right up to Claremont Tigers until three quarter time.

The final quarter at Brownes stadium saw the Tigers over run the Demons with the classy midfield dominating the stoppages and running away to win: 101 - 59.  But the signs were very positive for the Demons who showed great pressure and composure in stifling heat.  It was also the first game with the Demons new major sponsor "Provident" who have joined the football club. 

Ross Young was typically dominant for the Perth Demons with a 29 possession display while for the Claremont Tigers Kane Mitchell was outstanding with 28 touches and 3 tackles.

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Round 13 of the WAFL saw the East Fremantle Sharks take on the Perth demons who after a stretch of great form came into the game with considerable confidence.  The game was an arm wrestle throughout the match with neither side being able to gain ascendancy until the fourth quarter when the East Fremantle Sharks turned a 3 point defecit into a 6 goal to 2 final quarter to run away with the game finishing 85-68.

Reece Palmer did his chances of being recalled to the Fremantle Doclers no harm with a tireless display through four quarters gathering 34 touches while former West Coast Eagle & Western Bulldog Andew McDougall impressed for the visitors.

Sports photography in varying lighting conditions can be difficult.  At East Fremantle Oval the best place to photograph from is near the large Grand-Stand as the sun is always behind you ensuring you don't get any lens flare and players faces are in sun not shadow when running towards the camera.  However this same grandstand starts to cause a large shadow over the field in the third and fourth quarters.  This means that my daylight light balance needs to change to cloudy white balance to account for the change in light temperature.  I prefer to do this manually rather than set to AUTO as i keep more control over the colour tones of the final image.

In a perfect world lighting conditions for sports photography would be for a "bright" overcast day.  A thin layer of evenly dispersed cloud ensures that you won't have to worry about harsh shadows in faces or bodies and enable consistent shutterspeed and exposure values.  My preference is for over exposing by 1/3 of a stop to get detail in the shadow parts of the image then bring back the highlights from my RAW (.CR2) file in Photoshop CS5.  If lighting conditions are consistant through the game i can then batch process the images to quickly apply pre-set RAW profiles and watermark's to all images.