The Very Good and the Very Bad

...of sports photography.

Lately I've been using that basketball ceiling bounce trick an awful lot, and it's beat out my other methods - the Canon infrared wireless system, on-camera flash, and going commando - so far. Last week I tried using two 580s, one on-camera master and one as the slave, and that was a disaster. The slave fired a full second after the master, and only fired at all when I was within 10 feet! Useless, totally useless.

However, bounce flash has worked quite well. I turned out some really nice images in the past two weeks. We're just getting into CIF basketball games, my very favorites. The bleachers are full, the crowd is passionate, access is restricted so you don't get people running into your gear or in front of the lens. The players are brilliant, great action, and tons of emotion. And the best part - all players are wearing the right jerseys (usually with numbers on both front AND back!) and coaches always bring a roster! Those two factors make my life so much easier.

The downside of this season is that I'm also shooting a lot of soccer. Night soccer, on dimly lit fields. The play ranges far and wide, so there is absolutely no way to light it except on-camera. Action is hit and miss, the referees are uptight, the stadium lights create hotspots and every field has black holes, devoid of even the puniest photons. It wouldn't be so bad if I had a 70-200, a 400, anything with sharper glass than my cheapo 70-300. I end up follow focusing so much because the autofocus is sketchy. Even so, the glass isn't sharp anymore and I end up with fuzzy images that need a lot of post-processing. Which I hate.

But editing those basketball photos is a real dream, and that almost makes up for slogging through hundreds of fuzzy, noisy soccer shots. The latest basketball game fit onto just one card and editing took less than a half hour! The images needed almost nothing, just a bit of sharpening and color balance (just barely). Here are a few from a game last week:

Sleep well, and dream of Pocket Wizards...

Kudos to you if you caught that Princess Bride reference. Greatest movie ever.

Conejo Valley Wild Art

This was just a shot I grabbed at Cheseboro Park in Agoura Hills a few weeks ago, on a nice morning when we needed some wild art. I didn't put it in since the paper filled up before we needed the photos I had shot, but it is quite pretty. Nothing special, really, just some old oaks and a bench. Nice sky. Rolling hills.

Here's a shot I've been meaning to put up for a while now. This is an occasion when having a stand or tripod on which I could have mounted my flash would have been just killer. It's also an example of how much I've learned even in the few weeks since I shot this. Now, I would shoot it very differently. I would pull the background down a half stop or so, strobe with a cord from the upper left or perhaps give her a little side/back lighting. This is just plain old on-camera, with an omnibounce. But now I am prepared.

The "500" is because this is the 500th game she has coached at Newbury Park High School. Yes, the 500th game. She's been there over 30 years, if I remember correctly. Talk about a legacy. Arranging the basketballs like that was an idea from my sports editor, and I liked it. Again, nothing fancy, but more visually interesting than a standard headshot.

Bounce Flash

I took a page out of Gary's book (A Little News) to shoot this two weeks ago, in the Rio Mesa gym. It was just a simple basketball practice with one featured player, and normally I would just throw a 580 on the camera and bang out a few action shots, but I've really been trying to improve my lighting. The shots are decent now, but my lighting is technically awful. So I took his advice to bounce off the ceiling in small gyms (Rio Mesa's is TINY with a pure white ceiling) and I think it turned out well. I don't know why this didn't occur to me before. I suppose it was just lack of inspiration.




I only shot about 30 frames - a super quick shoot - and these were the nicest of the bunch. I'm still learning. But I do like these. Neat trick, Gary. Thanks!