Shocking green grass and a red ball

I spent last weekend in London, watching Dulwich Hamlet, and claiming my free pint from my friend John from the Southwark News for supplying a photo for the paper. The paper has a feature on their site that allows readers to purchase a PDF of a single issue of the paper, at a similar price to the print edition, so I can get a copy to see my handiwork in print without needing to take out a subscription.

London and the Home Counties have been enjoying (if you are out in it), or enduring (if you are trying to grow anything) a long spell of dry weather. This weekend was no exception, with bright sunshine, directly towards the Dog Kennel Hill end in the first half, giving the usual problems with haze and backlighting. We have looked before at how to compensate for the players being backlit, and the haze can be eliminated in the same way as fine rain. However, I sometimes find this leaves some of the colours over saturated, particularly the grass.

Take this shot of Dulwich's Dean Carpenter, firstly as it came off the camera (only cropped). The grass is already looking a bit lurid.

We can get rid of the haze using Levels, and adjusting highlights and shadows.

This, however, leaves the grass looking even more saturated, even after I have used the "less saturation" option. Working in jpeg, there is not a lot more I can do. Working in raw format would give more control over the white balance, but would also take more time, which is a consideration when producing a slide show for supporters whose interest in pictures of this game will wane at the point they set out to attend the next one, and for gentlemen of the press with papers to get out on Monday or Tuesday.

Kalvin Morath-Gibbs plays the red ball

Once again on a trip to Dulwich, I find myself commenting on the colour of the ball. As this was the weekend closest to the Sport Relief charity fundraising events, Ryman, the League sponsor, supplied a red ball. It is not universally popular, visibility can be an issue on a cloudy day, and some people feel it bounces higher than the regular ball. One supporter thought it was lighter - as the permitted weight for a football is 14-16oz (410-450g), this is quite possible, and would explain the bounce. Although the red ball has been used to support Sport Relief and Comic Relief for a number of years, another supporter (Pink Panther from the club forum, who has  a good memory for facts, and experience tells me is likely to be correct) said he has never seen a goal scored with it.

As only one ball is supplied, it inevitably ends up somewhere it is inconvenient to retrieve and is replaced by the regular ball, as happened a few minutes before half time. Almost immediately afterwards, Dulwich's Sol Pinnock scored the first goal.

Sol Pinnock moves towards goal with the regular ball

I normally leave pictures of the ground to the excellent Grounds for Concern blog, run by Mishi, the uncle of Kalvin Morath-Gibbs, but when someone points something out...

A few years ago I worked in Manchester with a Carlisle United supporter (who, like me, was from south east Surrey) during Carlisle's season in the Conference. It was clear quite quickly they were only going to be with us in the non League game for a year, and he seemed to have occasional difficulty adjusting to the facilities. He came away from a couple of away games complaining they did not have any toilets - for the avoidance of doubt, they are a requirement of all levels of FA ground grading, down to County League level. He would have no such issue at Dulwich, as we seem to be starting a small collection of signs to send people in the right direction (best counted in full screen).

Anyone know the way to the lavs?

The second half was much easier, nice warm sun on my back, the regular ball, and near-perfect lighting for the game, so I hardly needed to make any changes to the lighting when setting up the slideshow.

Francis Duku identifies a target for his free kick

I normally select about two thirds of the slideshow from the first half: when I come to the second half pictures, they are often very similar to the first half, and I have a few shots of most of the players. In this case, because of the lighting issues in the first half, the proportion was reversed.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.