Monday night was the championship game of the UCBAC (Upper Chesapeake Bay Athletic Conference) Boy’s Basketball. It was being held at Harford Community College.

I was there on assignment for The Examiner. I had never been to the HCC gym, so did not know if there would be any place to mount my strobes, so I decided to leave them home, and shoot ambient. With that in mind I loaded my camera bag with my 85 f/1.8 and 135 f/2.0 lenses.

Surprisingly the lighting in the gym wasn’t too bad (as far as gymnasiums go). My camera settings were ISO 1000; f/2.0; 1/500.

The Examiner wanted images of Aberdeen’s two superstars — Devon Saddler and Devon Branch. Devon Saddler’s father saw me waiting for the Girl’s championship game to finish and was telling me how the two Devon’s are slam dunking machines. He then showed me his T-Shirt that had images of both players with “Pick Your Poison” written across the top. I knew I was in for an exciting game.

Normally I like to use my 135 lens, but with the information of them loving to go strong to the basket, I switched to my 85 and setup camp for the game sitting at the corner of the baseline and sideline.

It didn’t take long and the fireworks started. I think Devon Saddler had four in the first half. I was in perfect position to capture the slam dunks and with a clean background to boot!

These two images above are a good example of why people have fits with white balance in a gymnasium. Just look at the wall in the background. Same camera settings, but they produced two different colors. Gym lights are generally fluorescent and actually cycle at 60Hz, so the light output is not constant. The human eye doesn’t notice this pulsating wave of output, but the camera sure does. The best way I have found to get the majority of your shots correct from the get-go is to shoot a gray card at 1/60 second, which allows the lights to complete a full cycle, thus giving you the average light color to use for your custom white balance.

Aberdeen went on to win 66-49 over Elkton which was Aberdeen’s fifth UCBAC championship, which just happens to be the total number of years the UCBAC has been in existence.