As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I shot a local high school women’s basketball game last night. The assignment, for the Chapel Hill News, was to shoot the East Chapel Hill Women Wildcats’ basketball game at Jordan High on 2/6/09. ECH won easily, taking them one step closer to the league championship.
The editors have the best shots from the day. Once they put the paper out, I will post those shots up here. In the meanwhile, I have a few outtakes. I shot an ECH men’s b-ball game for the News just before Thanksgiving. I have learned a few lessons, but have just barely scratched the surface.
In the image above, the Jordan High Falcons honor the national anthem prior to the start of the game. Fortunately for this shot, though the assignment was to shoot the other team, I had set my Vivitar 285HV on stand at the corner by the stands, which gave me enough light in the right area to get this shot. Despite the fact that luck had me in the right area to catch this moment, experience with this type of assignment would have put me in the right place as well. Knowing what to look for, as well as when and where to look for it, dramatically increases the proportion of decent shots. Being only my second basketball assignment, I missed far more good opportunities that I found.
Better equipment would not have hurt either. In this shot,I used my Sb-400 on camera (instead of the Vivitar on the stand). The light is a bit harsh, despite the omnibounce, and I did not have a fast enough shutter speed to achieve enough sharpness. The ISO was set to 800. Perhaps I need a faster lens, faster auto-focus, or more off-camera light, but maybe this would have worked with a higher ISO. Regardless, I wish that I had nailed this shot.
This shot of the tussle over the ball on the floor shows why multiple lights are good. There is a significant shadow the detract from the drama of the shot. Never mind that more light means beter exposure at higher shutter speeds, more lights means less shadow.
Luck of the moment. If the shutter had clicked a half second earlier or later 23, I would have caught her face instead of her arm. This could have been the shot of the game. The Wildcats, in black, won by a landslide. Despite four Falcon defenders converging, a single Wildcat is taking them to the cleaners.
The shoot, IMHO, went better than last time. Knock on wood that the paper will send me out for another game soon.
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[...] v. Falcons Image by Oberazzi Read more about the shoot on my blog. See the article in the Chapel Hill [...]
[...] v. Falcons Image by Oberazzi Read more about the shoot on my blog. See the article in the Chapel Hill [...]