Two local photographers, Russell Tracy and Dave Yoakum contacted me to come out to meet and shoot with them sometime. That time came last Thursday night at Fallston High School. Russell and Dave are practicing their off-camera techniques and this would be a good opportunity to learn from each other.

The Fallston gym, like most in Harford County, has very little room, and no balcony at the end of court which prevents getting our lights high and pointed parallel to the sidelines. We had to place the lights on the sides, which create too much crosslighting and harsh shadows.

When using strobes/flashes, ideally you want to over power the ambient light by 3 to 4 stops so that when you are shooting at your camera’s sync speed (typically 1/250 sec), the quick burst of light from the strobes is what freezes the action and not the shutter speed. I tried bouncing my 580EXs off the back wall to create a large light source, but my flashes, even on full power, could only muster about 2 stops over ambient. In a darker lit gym, this method would probably work, but Fallston’s ambient lighting is better than average.

I had to stick with direct light from the corners of the gym. I placed my flashes on my 7-foot light stands and set them each to 1/8 power, 28mm zoom and aimed them towards the top of the key.

Here are some samples from the night.

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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.

I had an assignment to shoot the Hampton at UMBC basketball game at the RAC Arena yesterday. I’ve been to this arena in the past and know it is as dimly lit as the average high school gym — boo. Usually college events have better lighting, but this is not the case at UMBC.

I brought two flashes with me to mount to the railings on the upper level to add a bit more light to the scene. Here is a shot from the other end of the court to show my setup.

I set the flashes to 1/4 power and 70mm zoom. I aimed each towards the center of the court. With this setup, I was able to shoot at ISO 200; f/2.8; 1/250.

UMBC came away with the win 83-65.

I shot a basketball on my pergo floor in my basement. Overhead I used a Canon 580EX flash at 1/8 power with shipping tube over flash head to create the spotlight look. I positioned a second 580EX at 1/32 power on floor with snoot pointed directly at ball to give a bit of fill to the lower half of ball.

I was quite pleased with the way this turned out. By looking at the image itself, you would think it was taken on a basketball court floor, rather than in my basement.

Below shows how the shot was setup: