Host team falls in BB tournament contest

I shot two high school basketball tournament games on December 20, but with the holiday madness I didn’t get around to editing and posting these images from one of the games until now.

In this game I concentrated on the host team Las Plumas HS Thunderbirds (white jerseys) who played the Sutter HS Huskies. It was a back-and-forth affair with the Huskies leading 23-19 at halftime and the Thunderbirds rallying in the 4th quarter to tie the Huskies 45-45 with 1:40 to play. From there it was a 7-point run for the Huskies as they won 52-45.

D700 was used with 80-200 f/2.8 for photos 1-3 and with 50 f/1.8 for photos 4-6.

Comments are welcome.


Bob
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1.
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2.
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3. #24 had 15 points for the Thunderbirds.
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4.
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5. #10 was the high-point man for Las Plumas with 17.
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6.
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Very nice Bob, as usual. Your eye for the action and timing are excellent. I also think you've got a great processing formula for your basketball photos. They're sharp, snappy and bright with good white balance without looking overprocessed. Of this group, I like the second and fourth images the most. The first one is pretty sweet, too.

For what it's worth, I haven't forgotten your complaints about the photo upload process. I'm sure you saw the ski tour thread I just posted. That was actually the first post I've made since we upgraded the forums that had a whole bunch of photos. I didn't find the process too confusing but I definitely see some room for streamlining it. Thanks for letting me know how you feel about it. I've got so many different irons in the fire that it's easy for me to forget about things that are out of sight and out of mind :)

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Originally Posted by Photo-John

Very nice Bob, as usual. Your eye for the action and timing are excellent. I also think you've got a great processing formula for your basketball photos. They're sharp, snappy and bright with good white balance without looking overprocessed. Of this group, I like the second and fourth images the most. The first one is pretty sweet, too.

For what it's worth, I haven't forgotten your complaints about the photo upload process. I'm sure you saw the ski tour thread I just posted. That was actually the first post I've made since we upgraded the forums that had a whole bunch of photos. I didn't find the process too confusing but I definitely see some room for streamlining it. Thanks for letting me know how you feel about it. I've got so many different irons in the fire that it's easy for me to forget about things that are out of sight and out of mind :)

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Thanks much, John. (I presume from your forum name that your real name is John.)

I'm especially glad to know that you don't consider my images over-processed. You may have noted some back-and-forth comments on that subject on this forum lately regarding some basketball photos I posted here recently. The evaluation of photos is a highly subjective matter involving personal taste to a large degree. What looks good to one doesn't pass muster with another. As long as the majority of viewers think well of my photos I'm content and can let the occasional negative comments slide off my back.

I'm doing better in posting my images. However, I'm still having an occasional problem separating out the uploaded photos from their side-by-side orientation and arranging them in a single vertical column for display. To do this I click in the narrow space between two images, hit the space bar once to separate them more, and then hit the return key to move them down. Sometimes I end up losing an image in the process. That happened when posting these images, but I was able to hit the go-back arrow and start rearranging again with a successful conclusion.

I'm glad that you like #2 and #4. With #1 and #2 and similar images I'm currently into what I dub "conflict" shots. The 80-200 helps a lot to get those. I was somewhat hesitant to post #4. The face of the ball handler was not as sharply focused as it might be, and I had to apply more than the usual dose of output sharpening to get the result I wanted with the prospect of the "sharpness police" picking up on it! I'm like the photographer I recently heard about who says he sharpens as much as he can get away with!


Bob

Another very nice set of images Bob. I like the nice tight shots something I have worked on the last couple of games and the concept of conflict has always been a key to me in sport photos even though I never thought to call them that. The next few days will busy for me, I'm shooting a game tonight then a girl/boy HS double headed on Friday and women/men's college double header on Saturday and another women's game on Monday night. After two weeks off for the holidays it's going to get hectic in a hurry.

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Originally Posted by Old Timer

Another very nice set of images Bob. I like the nice tight shots something I have worked on the last couple of games and the concept of conflict has always been a key to me in sport photos even though I never thought to call them that. The next few days will busy for me, I'm shooting a game tonight then a girl/boy HS double headed on Friday and women/men's college double header on Saturday and another women's game on Monday night. After two weeks off for the holidays it's going to get hectic in a hurry.

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Thanks again, Larry. Most of those tight shots are taken with the 80-200 f/2.8 at the 80 mm. setting. High school basketball tournaments are still going strong around here, and today I shot three more games at a tournament in a nearby city. In addition to the shots taken at 80 mm. I experimented with some at the 105 mm. setting. I'm liking the tighter upper body shots better than the full-body or nearly full-body shots resulting from use of the shorter lenses. One problem I have though is being able to move the heavy 80-200 fast enough to capture the action. It's a load compared with the 50 mm. f/1.8.


Bob