Home, Sweet Home

Well, last night I had my first experience shooting a basketball game in a gymnasium.  It was so much more difficult than I ever thought it would be.  Before I left, I did some cramming to determine the best techniques to use.  I spent a few minutes in Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography Book,  Volume 3, particularly Chapter 7 “Shooting Sports Like a Pro”.  Now the brief 10 minutes I spent studying up were invaluable as I shot, but I still wasn’t prepared.  I should have been studying and practicing for several days.  Fortunately this wasn’t an official shoot; I was just shooting my nephew in his last regular season Varsity basketball game.

Throughout the whole game, I kept changing ISOs from auto to 400 and even up to 1600.  I know that 1600 is photography noise overload, but it was the only way to get enough light to keep my shots from being too dark and to keep my shots from blurring.  I even compensated my exposure to +2.  Also because of the lighting, I could only get my shutter speed up to 1/125.  Still nowhere near fast enough to freeze the motion at a basketball game.

I actually look forward to researching some more to figure out how to get better shots in such poor lighting. Until then, take a look at a few pics I thought were decent.  And don’t be too critical of me.  I’ve only been shooting since Christmas.

By the way, I love the way royal blue photographs.