2016 Canyon Varsity Basketball (M)

UPDATE: A few things. I DID go back for another game Tuesday, and ended up with a huge batch. I was hired to shoot Senior Night, so there’s some posed stuff in here too. Also we found the photos of the guy who used the flashes in Game 1. You can judge for yourself, but I think they're disappointing. He posted a gallery of 112 photos, and only about half are of Canyon. In contrast my gallery had 125 of just Canyon. There's some good shots in there, but also quite a few I wouldn't have kept. One of the drawbacks to the flashes that I hadn't thought of, but see clearly in many of his photos, is arm shadows. It's already difficult to get face shots with the ball and arms flailing all around, the additional shadows just complicate the mess. Also, when using flashes you have one snap as opposed to rapid fire shooting. More on the battle as it develops. The first gallery is of players/fans, and you can purchase individual prints and goodies. The gallery below is of the 5 players that pitched in to have me shoot their game. They all get CD's of the photos (including the specials), and all items in this gallery are heavily discounted. Here's the 2016 Canyon Varsity Basketball BIG 5 Gallery (CLICK). After all is said and done this gallery came out much better than expected. There's a lot of Photoshop involved, but I'm very pleased with this set. B

The struggle is real. I SO want to tell everyone I now shoot basketball, karate, volleyball, and all the other stuff that happens inside the dim gyms. I gave it another valiant effort the other night, and there IS some good stuff in here, but I'm having a hard time accepting the limitations of gym lights. I'm simply going to have to invest in some serious lighting. The problem with that though, is often the officials don't allow it. There was another photo guy at this game using 4 Canon Speedlites ($500 a pop) on tall tripods, I'd love to see what he got. Even with the flashes your initial focus has to be made in the existing light, which is half the problem. There's very little contrast to grab a fast focus. I played with these and managed 125 for the gallery, even though I snapped over 1000. I'm used to 30% - 40% keepers, and that may just be the nature of the beast. I found some distances and settings that gave me the best results as I shot in RAW and varied my settings throughout the night. I will probably shoot them again on Tuesday, self torture - but more learning. Ha. Here's the 2016 Canyon Varsity Basketball Gallery (CLICK). B