On Tuesday night, we decided to head out to The Joe to catch some Minor League Baseball courtesy of the Charleston Riverdogs.

One of the biggest attractions at The Joe is the food – we showed up in time to eat a glorious dinner of nachos, pizza, chicken, boiled peanuts & beer. After we got settled into our seats we got to see the Riverdogs give Georgia’s Rome Braves a royal butt-kicking.

Ken Carrington, the Riverdogs’ public-address announcer awards this guy some tickets (even though he got the trivia question wrong – isn’t Ken nice?)

There was no shortage of balls flying out of the field on Tuesday!

Charlie, the Riverdogs mascot, likes to party with the people.

By a score of 8-2, Charleston dominated the evening. Outfielder Slade Heathcott had a great game, with a hit, a walk, a stolen base, & a run scored.

The pitching was spot on too – here’s closer Manuel Barreda shutting down the top of the 9th to seal the deal for Charleston.

I shot the game from my seat with my 55-300 VR lens, which is not an ideal lens for nighttime sports photography. However, it is perfect for recreational shooting like this – I’m not winning any awards with these shots, but I’m successfully telling a story, which is what I had set out to do. I was shooting in manual mode with the widest aperture at any given focal length (the 55-300 has a variable aperture ranging from f/4.5-f/5.6 depending on your focal length). I also shot most of the game with a noisy ISO of 3200 to compensate for my shutter speed which was anywhere from 200th of a sec to 320th!

You can read the whole rundown of the game here. I also have a set of photos up on Flickr.