Even In A Loss The Mustangs Look Great At Moody Coliseum

This week I went to Moody Coliseum to watch the SMU Mustangs basketball team take on the Cincinnati Bearcats. At the time the Mustangs were ranked No. 23 in the country in both the Associated Press and USA Today Coaches polls, but couldn't take care of business and lost to the Bearcats 54-62 as well as their ranking. I wrote a story about it here.

I have a lot of opinions on the team but this is a blog about my getting better at photography. Shooting basketball is a whole different beast from shooting football. For one, not all basketball arenas have good lighting. I graduated from the University of North Texas and their basketball arena known as The Super Pit had terrible lighting. If you were trying to use the available light there you'd have to shoot at around ISO 4000 or 5000 just to really freeze the action and get rid of any motion blur. And with high ISOs like that you're not walking away with crips shots--plenty of grain. That, of course, is if you're not using strobes, which you're probably not unless you're shooting for a newspaper or the athletic department. SMU's newly renovated Moody Coliseum has fantastic lighting, though.

Without using a strobe I was shooting around ISO 1600 to 2000 at F2.8 and a shutter speed of 1/1000 or 1/1250 to really freeze the action. I'm limited in the lens department so my 85mm 1.8 was the workhorse. It's sharp enough that I can crop images and they'll maintain their sharpness but I missed out on a lot of photos because the action was too close to me at times and the 85mm was too tight to get a decent shot. In a perfect world I'd have two camera bodies. One with a 70-200mm F/2.8 and the other with a 16-35mm F/2.8 for extra wide angles.

A recent thing I've picked up about shooting basketball is that it's best when shot vertically or in a portrait style. If it's shot horizontally or in a landscape style there's usually so much dead space that it hurts the impact of the photo. So when a player's around the perimeter or in the paint I'll shoot vertically but when a player makes a move to the basket for a dunk or a layup I'll try to capture all the action around the basket in horizontal or landscape mode. On this night that really worked for me and I captured some of my favorite basketball shots to date. 

My goal for my next basketball game is to have a 70-200mm F/2.8 with me to capture more action and get more variety of course. A variety of shots is I'm always lacking when I walk away from a shoot. 

Paying Attention to Backgrounds

This is a photo of former Baylor forward Cory Jefferson, who's now in the NBA but is unfortunately just known for this play, participating in the 2014 NCAA Slam Dunk Contest. It's one of my favorite photos.

If you're going to shoot a slam dunk contest I feel like a wide angle lens is the only way to do it. For this photo event I was using my 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens. The wide angles just provide a lot context to the photo and really exaggerate the athleticism of the dunker. In this shot Jefferson is just about his peak altitude just before finishing this dunk. His body is at full extension, his face is focused on the rim and his jersey is rippling in the wind--it's stunning. BUT ... every time I look at this photo I'm devastated that at that exact moment the arm of an ESPN camera rig is right behind Jefferson causing it to look like some odd extension of his body. 

I was really careful about keeping this camera rig out of my shots but it crept in at the worst moment. Usually when backgrounds distract from the subject I toss the photo because that's one of the first rules I learned--keep your backgrounds clean--but in this case I couldn't toss this one aside. Instead I cherish it as a fantastic photo with a terrible flaw that teaches me to do better next time.

First Shooting Experience at AT&T Stadium

AT&T Stadium seems to be the hottest sports venue in the country, and I'm sure that makes Jerry Jones supremely ecstatic. The stadium is a marvel. There's not a detail that went overlooked and that even goes for the photo work rooms. 

Usually the photo work room in a stadium is glorified broom closet. At Jerry World, the work room is built like a locker room. Each photographer has their own work station and outlets. Few things are worse than trying to squeeze in trying to find a place to work then crawling under tables looking for a plug. The best part, though, the photographers have their dining area on the field level. It was nice to not have to walk across the stadium, up to the fifth level to the press box.

It was a nice change-of-pace experience but I typically don't care for those accommodations. I'm usually annoyed by members of the media who expect a certain type of food, drink or working condition. It's all superfluous. 

As for my photos, I was happy to have the opportunity to capture some photos of wide receivers working down the field for receptions. This is one of the things I told myself to work on this season instead of hundreds of photos of quarterbacks and ball carriers on the ground. It was an easy opportunity,  though, considering Baylor and Texas Tech were in a shootout, which Baylor barely walked away from. 

Of all the detail put into AT&T Stadium, there is one "glaring" flaw: The sun. This game kicked off around 2:30 p.m. and by about 5:00 p.m., the sun was about to set and a terrible glare cast through the glass of the stadium creating terrible shadows and unwanted silhouettes that were hard to avoid. In a way I'm glad it happened because I was able to learn how to work through it, which is what this season has been all about.

The Limitations of a Beginner Sports Photographer

In the next couple of weeks I plan on writing a lengthy post about the economics of sports photography. As exciting and rewarding as it can be, it comes at a high price because there is just so much gear involved. 

Anyway, one of the reasons money and camera gear are always on my mind is because I see the limitations of the gear I own every time I look at the final product of my photos. It's frustrating. These photos here were shot at Apogee Stadium in Denton, Texas where I cover the North Texas Mean Green. This game was against conference opponent Florida Atlantic, and unfortunately it was at night. 

I wish I could say I own a Canon 1DX and a 400m F/2.8L lens, but I have to do my best with a Canon 5D Mark III, which is an AMAZING camera (don't get me wrong) but it has its limitations with frames per second and noise reduction compared to the former. The lens I typically use for football games is a Canon 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6L IS USM. Again, it's a fantastic piece of equipment but for football games it'd be nice to work with a lens that has a wider aperture so I could condense the backgrounds more for that bokeh effect, especially at a stadium like Apogee that features off-putting brown concrete walls around the field that can be a little distracting. It's also not an ideal lens for night football games because I have to boost my ISO really high if I want to make sure I freeze the action and remove any chance of motion blur in my photos. 

In the grand scheme of things, these are really nitpicky criticisms of my work because I walked away with fine photographs, but it's just frustrating to know that the photographers also working the game that night walked away with better photographs because they do have the ideal equipment. And I don't just want to walk away with fine photographs--they should be outstanding. It's just something I have to deal with in the learning stages. What's more important is that I continue to work on my composition, variety and exposure.