For the casual sports fan, my job seems like a dream -- going to all the games and taking pictures for a living.

But my job does has disadvantages, and one of them is that I frequently work nights and weekends. And now that my kids are older and playing sports, it can be a challenge for me to get to see their practices and games.

When I am able to attend, just like many of you, I'm also interested in photographing my own kids.

Obviously, one of the great perks of my job is the close proximity and access I get to big-time sporting events. But at youth sports events, I have the same proximity and access as any other parent and like you, I want to capture some memories.

Even though I have access to the top-of-the line digital cameras and the longest, fastest lenses made, I often leave them behind when I attend my kids' games.

For one, I don't want to distract them — their games are just that — theirs. And when I do bring my cameras, I make sure not to interfere with the players, the coaches or the game in any way.

But tonight, for the first time this season, I brought a camera and a couple of lenses to my son's Little League game in Shoreline. His team is called the Mariners, and they play in a "78'er coach-pitch" league (at this age, child pitchers can't throw the ball across the plate very well, and so coaches do the pitching to their own batters).

I purposely left the "long glass" (300mm and 400mm lenses) at home, and instead shot at three lens lengths common to many amateur photographers — 24mm, 70mm, and 200mm.

To make successful photos at a youth baseball game, one doesn't need to have special access beyond the fence that surrounds the infield.

I just take a telephoto lens and shoot right through the chain link fence.

When I do this, parents will invariably ask me, "doesn't the fence ruin your pictures?"

Well, the answer is "it depends" and "sometimes".

It depends on what lens you're using (longer lenses work better) and sometimes the angle of the lens to the fence can provide a little distortion.

The secret is to press your lenses as close to the fence as possible (hopefuly without scratching the front element!). If you keep the lens reletively perpendicular to the fence, a 200mm lens should have no blur. But as you increase the angle of the lens to the fence, the distortion increases.

Remember that telephoto lenses (200mm and longer) do this trick better than do wide angle lenses.

Here's an example of a 24mm lens shooting through the fence:

As you can see, the angle of view is so wide that the links in the fence are plainly visible. Not that this would really matter in this case, since the players I'm shooting are relatively far away.

Here's the same view shot with a 70mm lens.

Notice that even though the angle of view is "tighter", the fence is still obtrusive.

And here's the same angle with a 200mm lens.

You can see that the fence has "disappeared" in the above image. As I said before, you might still see a blur through the viewfinder of your camera, but the final image is okay.

Someday my son will cringe when he looks at the shot below because he's not making the catch. But I'll remind him that at six-years old, it was a decent effort even to try to catch a ball backhanded.

Shooting the action on the field is not the only place where shooting through a fence works. Here's a photo shot through the fence looking into the dugout area. Shot with a 200mm lens again, the fence "disappears". Also, as my subject is closer to my lens, the background blurs just enough to see the other players, but not so sharp that they are distracting from the main subject. I'm also aware here that the sun is behind my subject, so I've set the camera to overexpose the scene.

You'll probably want a photo of your son or daughter batting. Note that having "bat-on-ball" isn't nearly as important as capturing an expression of concentration, and setting the scene.

When shooting your player in the field, it's nice to get "peak action" shots, but keep in mind your goal is to record a future memory, not necessarily to get a shot worthy of "Sports Illustrated".

One key to remember is that all of my shots of youths are shot from a low angle — this allows me to include two important ingredients to my images — shooting from a low angle lets me see the players' eyes under the bills of their ballcaps, and shooting from the height of a standing adult will make the players seem smaller.

Hey, it's sports photography — make the players look big and heroic, right?

In the next installment, I'll discuss "finding moments" at your local youth game.