A Little News

Bounce flash in a very small gym with lots of white surfaces to bounce light from.

Did I fail to mention that it is basketball season again?  This is my least favorite sport to shoot and I guess I am lucky that I don’t cover too much of it any more since I am working mostly day shifts now but over the years I have covered hundreds, if not thousands, of basketball games.  It seems to be the season that never ends.  It does have its moments though and you get some of the best, funniest and even ugliest faces in photos during basketball games.  Way more than in other sports where faces are often obscured and you are very close to the action which increases your chances of good facial expression.  On top of that, if you shoot a lot of high school hoops like I have always done, you are most likely strobing the gym so you have great light on those expressions.

Well, you  have great light assuming that you can position your strobes in good locations and not end up with garish shadows crossing those great facial expressions.  So maybe now is the time for a little lighting primer.  Back in the day I used to always shoot with on camera direct flash which partially explains why I never really liked shooting high school hoops.  No amount of Photoshop can cure on camera flash in a dark gym.  It just is what it is.  Then one day my friend Corey Wilson came to work for The Decatur Daily.  He owned his own set of White Lightning strobes and he used them for every basketball game.  His stuff looked great and my stuff looked like I didn’t care.  I bummed strobes off of Corey every chance I got but that was not a good solution.  I finally convinced the boss to buy us a set of mono-lights we could use and then Corey left us to go to Green Bay and he took his lights with him.  I spent the next season and a half lugging in those AC powered mono-lights, stands and endless extension cords climbing all over the patrons trying to get everything hooked up, taped down and out of the way.

Finally one day, the light came on.  My boss bought me an SB800 to go with the SB28DX I was already carrying and just like that my shoulder began to recover from heavy mono-light syndrome.  Never heard of it?  That is an obvious deformity of the left shoulder leaving a deep indentation between the neck and shoulder joint which results from carrying that ever loving heavy bag in and out of crowded gymnasiums all winter long.  About that same time I discovered Strobist, God bless David Hobby, and my life was transformed.  Now I was going into those same gyms with about forty pounds less gear and getting essentially the same results.

I have made one more evolution in my lighting gear.  Now I am using a pair of Lumedynes I picked up used and they are wonderful.  They have more power than the SBs and are less bulky than the mono-lights.  A great compromise and they work wonderfully.  So how do you position the lights and yourself to make the most out of those small, dark high school gymnasiums.  I am so glad you asked.  Tonight, for instance, I worked in one of the two or three smallest gymnasiums in our area and it is not well lit either.  What it does have is that white padded insulation stuff all over the place in the ceiling and even on the walls above the concrete blocks.  So I could bounce my strobes into the ceiling and shoot basketball in a giant softbox.  Nice!  And it is almost compensation for shooting in a “cracker box” gymnasium.

Normally I have to use direct flash.  Most gymnasiums are a bit larger and less accommodating of bounce flash with ceilings that are either too high or simply not white.  Most high school gyms use the same basic layout.  They have bleacher seating down the sides and open ends with varying amounts of space between the baseline and the wall.  Some gymns have balconies or even tracks around the court area.  Some have full balconies running all the way around the gym and others have balconies just on the sides.  There is even one gym with balconies behind each basket, no baseline area at all and stands down both sides right up to the court.  Setting up strobes then becomes a work in gymnastics.  (Yeah, I planned that one.  Did you enjoy that little pun?)

The basic lighting scheme I use in almost every case where there are no balconies is two lights on light stands in the corners of the gym on either side of the basket I am shooting under.  I place them as high as I can get them and aim them to cross in the lane or at the top of the key.  It depends on how far back I can get the strobes.  The more distance behind the basket I can get the strobes the further up the court I aim them.  In those gyms where there is only a few feet between the basket and the back wall I cross the lights more toward the center of the lane to prevent light loss under the basket.

If there are balconies then I am very happy.  I can get my strobes much higher and I can get them out of the way of the majority of the foot traffic in the gym.  It is a constant worry that someone will trip over the light stands and knock them over or even hurt themselves.  I usually secure my light stands to something stationary with ball bungee cords or even tape.  An alternative to light stands are super clamps that allow you to physically clamp your strobe to something like a rail or a bar.  The gym usually dictates what you can do.  Nine times out of ten I have to shoot my strobes direct but every now and then I get to use bounce and it is really nice light.  Since I will never have the luxury of really setting a lighting scheme like you see in the big arenas I am not worried about darkening down my backgrounds so the bounce light is really nice.

I do not try and totally kill the ambient light in the gym.  A lot of people do and that is fine.  I like to have my ISO up around 800 and in most of our places this gives me a bit of illumination in the background to balance the lighting from the strobes.  I usually aim for an exposure of 1/250 at f2.8 ISO 800.  About 90 percent of all my high school hoops is done this way.  It is my preference and not any rule.  When I began shooting SBs in gyms this worked really well and I have continued it using my Lumedynes.  It all comes down to whatever works for you.  I just don’t like my backgrounds to be real dark because then it looks like photos are over strobed.

The photos with this post area combination of shots done with both bounce and direct flash.  Strobe positions are very similar with the difference being the size of the gyms and the ability or lack of ability to bounce.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

It’s a whole new ball game out there. Not just on the playing field, but in photojournalism. In 1986, when I started my first paying job in this profession, I was one happy guy if I could turn in three good black and white prints from a 7:30p.m. basketball game and still make my 9:45p.m. deadline.

Today, that mentality has changed. Today it’s not about quality, it’s about quantity. It’s common place for a photographer to turn in 20 photos from a basketball game, and still meet that 9:45p.m deadline. We have to “feed the online beast” is the new battle cry in a world where newspapers and wire services, mine included, are struggling to find a way to deliver their product and still make a profit.

Yes, we no longer have to drive like mad back to the office to soup film and make prints, those days are gone. Now we sit at press row filing like our pencil colleagues in comfort, pulling out the reading glasses to view the small type of the flip cards as we write our captions.

But, is more better? Does the reader/viewer really want more? Do they want to see your 20 so/so images from the basketball game or do they want to see your best work? Do they really want to see a slide show with pointless audio from the last night’s game? I can’t answer any of those questions. Perhaps a well paid survey company can, but I can’t.

But I can tell you what I think.

I think we need to get back to basics. Yes, photo galleries are great, but make them tell a story. Don’t put four different versions of the same photo in your slide show just to flush it out. Put in the best one, edit your stuff. I would much rather look at 10 really good photos that tell the story of the game, then twenty photos that are all over the map. It’s about quality.

As a former picture editor and Director of Photography at several newspapers, I can remember vividly some of the heated discussions we would have in news meetings over the lead photo for the next days’ front page. No matter the opinion on the photo, in the end, it was always about the content. Was it a good enough photo to warrant carrying the front page of the paper for the next day? That thought process doesn’t seem to carry over to the online world where more is better.

We need to get back to basics of good photojournalism and having that page one mentality. While it’s not 1986 anymore, we need to still think like we did then and put our best work out there.

Photo copyright Rob Carr, The Associated Press. The opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of the Associated Press or of my employer, The Decatur Daily.  The basketball photo is one of a sequence of five frames which Rob edited down to the best frame presenting the essence of his theme; one well edited frame is better than several pictures that are just not the right moment.

Basketball is not my favorite sport but tournament time is my favorite sports time of the year. In Alabama, we have the state basketball tournament going on. It is in the regional phase right now and our regional is held in what can only be described as basketball heaven. Take a deep breath and say together with me, available light high school hoops. Not just available light but ISO 800, 1/500th sec at f2.8, color temperature 3800 Kelvin available light! Ahhhhhh! Thank you Wallace State Community College.

This gymnasium is, by far, the best basketball facility I have been in anywhere in Alabama. I can’t speak to the whole state but I have never heard of anything else that rivals it including the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center which only surpasses it in seating capacity. How a community college got this kind of facility is a testimony to the power of pork barrel politics. I know for sure of three governors from the county this college is located in and two of those governors were from the powerful Folsom family. At any rate, I would be for a whole lot more pork barrel politics if it gave me 1/500th at f2.8 at ISO 800! Alas, some political clout is used to build roads and not arenas.

Back to the court. I love tournament time. There is emotion. There is plenty of drama. There is some excellent prep basketball. Oh, and did I mention that the light is great and I can shoot 8fps if my heart so desires. What a liberation after a season of strobed hoops at one or, on a good day, two frames per second. Oh, oh, and I can shoot with long glass indoors. A 300 f2.8 or even a 400 f2.8 from the stands or from the baseline. Like I said, basketball heaven. Then there are the fans. It is like March Madness only scaled down to the high school level. Most high schools allow their students to attend the games so the atmosphere is charged with lots of teen enthusiasm so features are pretty easy to come by.

This tournament is like the sweet sixteen of the state hoops in the semi-final round followed by the elite eight in the final round. The winners move on to Birmingham for the final four. Alabama has six size classifications for high schools so there are four teams from each class in the tournament in both boys and girls. I’m not real good with math but that equals a whole lot of basketball. Some of these kids I have covered in one sport or another for many years so I know some of them pretty well. My kids played ball with some of them when they were in youth leagues so it is even more enjoyable to be a part of especially when they play well.

And because it can be the last game of the season, and for some kids, the last game of their playing career, the action is intense on the court and the reaction is intense off the court. All in all, it is tough to beat. And did I mention the light? Ahhhhhh, the light! Heaven must be lit a lot like this only there it will probably be like 1/10000000000th second a f5.6 at ISO 10 or something. Until then, I will revel in that little piece of heaven tucked into the back side of Wallace State’s campus.

About the photos: The top photo was shot with an EOS 5D using an 70-200 f2.8 lens. Exposure was 1/640 at f2.8 at ISO 800. I had just a bit of daylight helping on this exposure. The illumination inside the arena is about 1/3rd stop higher during the daytime due to some huge windows in the corners of the building. The lower photo was shot with a Nikon D2Hs at 1/500th sec f2.8 at ISO 800 using an 80-200 f2.8 zoom.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

If you work in the newspaper business and shoot sports at all you know that basketball season is the one season that never seems to end. It is the longest of the prep sports beginning in November here in Alabama and going through until early March. And there are several games a week. This can lead to a lot of photos of the same thing. A jump shot here, a rebound there and it all starts to merge into one big, bouncing,orange blob.

How then do you stay fresh and keep your photos fresh? Ahh, there it is. Staying fresh in the midst of sameness. Is that the challenge of all community journalism? You cover some of the same events repeatedly whether sports or council meetings or festivals. Already you can see that the principles you are about to read will work for you in more than one venue. So hang on. The road to fresh photos begins in your head. Where else?

The easiest thing in the world is to do the job the same way over and over again, especially when you are getting acceptable results. Right? Well, that is right as long as you don’t want to get any better. If, however, your quest makes you push yourself harder and harder each day to make better pictures then you have a challenge. Begin by pretending you have never shot a basketball game before. Look around the gym and find the place where you think it might be cool to shoot from. Okay, there is a reason why most basketball is shot from the baseline. That is where the game “looks” right and you will probably get the highest percentage of good shots. Never the less, why not move around.

The photos in this post are just simplistic movement on my part to get high, get low and move around while still shooting from that high percentage zone. In the first photo, I am on a balcony that is absurdly close to the baseline in this gym. I am able to look almost straight down on the floor from this vantage point and it gives the feeling of a cool perspective without the expense and time of hanging a remote camera in the rafters. (If you shoot high school hoops on tight deadlines you already know that is not a real option anyway.)

The second photo shows a slightly elevated point of view. I got this by climbing to the top of a short set of bleachers in another gym. Why do this? It is as high as I can get in this gym and it has the advantage of clearing my sight lines of people walking in front of me along the baseline and usually helps keep the ref out of the photo. It also cleans up the background when shooting with a medium to long lens.

The third photo gives a perspective I get when shooting from my knees along the baseline. I was fortunate enough to have a good play happen literally three feet in front of me. I am down there right at their eye level and it is an angle people attending the game don’t usually get. Even if they do happen to see the play, it happens so fast that it gets lost in the whirl of the game.

The final perspective is from a camera literally sitting on the floor tipped slightly up. I shot this holding the camera on the floor but it could just as easily have been done by using a floor plate and a remote set up to fire the camera. It is a really simple shot that works sometimes and doesn’t sometimes. This is one of my more successful floor shots. I don’t rely on these but they do provide a nice variety to the long lens/tight shots that I usually look for.

The point is you have to try different things to get different results. A different lens or a different perspective or both will improve not only your pictures, but also your attitude when you have to do this two or three times a week. Have fun and get mobile.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

High school basketball is officially underway and I have one goal for each and every basketball season; NO ARMPITS! You have all seen them, shots of kids with arms raised and the ball over their heads taking a shot. There is no avoiding them, not really, but I will do everything I possibly can to avoid turning one in. That is, of course, the safety shot because you can get it easily and every game which is yet another reason to avoid shooting the armpit photo. The other time the pits show up is on rebounding. That is the second most common armpit shot. Again, I pray for the ball and the kids to go scattering on the floor so I can avoid the armpits. Okay, can you tell I really don’t like the armpit photo?

So, after I have my safety shot of a kid doing a layup, getting a rebound or taking a jump shot I will do almost anything to avoid turning it in. I’ll shoot wide, I’ll shoot tight, I’ll shoot the bench, the coach, the cheerleaders, the mascot or even the doggone referee just please save me from the pitshot. If only we could outlaw armpit photos, oh what a wonderful world it would be. I guess by now you are wondering what the heck is wrong with me. You wouldn’t wonder if you were in your 18th season of prep basketball which starts in November and ends in March and plays three times a week and you had climbed through countless crowded gymnasiums to hang strobes then climbed over even larger crowds to retrieve your strobes when you have to leave before the game is over and all to get yet another hairy armpit shot. Whew!

Prep basketball wears on me like no other season. It is long. Gymnasiums are overcrowded and uncomfortable. People are constantly walking in front of you on the baselines and refs must get paid a bonus to stand directly in front of you. Oh yeah, about three quarters of the way through the season you suddenly can’t get any meaningful shot in focus. The mid-season basketball gremlin invades your AF system and renders it useless for all the good shots and you come back with nothing but hairy armpit shots in focus. Arrrrrrrgh! There is a slight payoff to the basketball season and this is why I keep doing it. There is no more intense action in any sport and you are closer to said action than in any other sport and you can make some amazing action photos with contorted faces and bodies and, once in a while, you make a nice picture without hairy armpits in it. Then there are the post-season tournaments. The best emotion and intensity comes from the post-season basketball tournaments and we are blessed with an excellent facility to shoot the regional tournament in which is lit like heaven. You don’t have to hang a single strobe and you can fire away at 8fps and you feel like a big boy photojournalist and you can forget for a while that you are shooting prep basketball and that you are still quite likely to get a few hairy armpit photos, this time in a sequence because you are shooting a 8fps.

Then you will get joy and sorrow like you don’t see in any other sport because the players are intense and their emotions are right out there on their sleeves, which, of course, they don’t wear because they must display their hairy armpits. In the end, at the state finals in Birmingham, kids will cry when they lose, they will scream with joy when they win and you will get fantastic pictures either way and then, thank God, baseball season starts and they wear long sleeves.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions express in this blog are my own (for sure this time) and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.