Let's face it, with the 40-150 in the bag, a shot like this was always going to happen. And probably will more than once in this year's PAD, if my remaining eye holds out. (Actually I found that that was slightly better by this afternoon but still a long way from normal. Maybe I'll beat the odds of it self healing but it's way too early to be hopeful.)

I'm undecided about whether I went a trifle too far in opening up here. Obviously my intent was to keep a relatively narrow plane of action sharp but I'm not sure whether it would have been better to keep Rabobank guy within the depth of field or not. (Not that I could have made that call on the fly with an action sequence anyway.) Part of me thinks better that he's not since he's not key to the action at the moment, although he was the one who kicked the ball into play. Part of me thinks that he's close enough to the action that he should have been a sharp part of it.

In any case, the thing with action shots is that you get only one chance. This moment has already happened and shall not happen again... and so the shot is what it is.

Last Year