High School Basketball – Pullman vs West Valley – Feb. 11, 2022

It’s been nearly four years since I shot a basketball game. I took my Canon 6D with my trusty 70-200 lens. I got a new f/1.2 30mm prime lens. I put that on the 70D. As I shot I noticed the 70D consistently produced images with more grain. My 6D is a newer body. I set both of them to around f/3.3 with a shutter speed of 1/800 and auto ISO. As I look through the photos I can tell which ones were from the 6D and which were from the 70D based on the grain.

Tonight’s game against West Valley high school was senior night. It also meant Pullman would win the leave championship with a victory. Throughout the game Pullman pretty much controlled everything. Shortly after the third quarter started West Valley made a bit of a run and made it close but it didn’t take Pullman long to start running away again.

Following the game I got a few shots of the players celebrating their league championship.

I am not expert at shooting basketball. It is challenging because it seems bright inside the gym unless you’re shooting photos. So I have to compromise on the f/stop and shutter speed to get the photo without too much noise.

On top of that I have no idea what I am doing when cropping the photos. Obviously, I am trying to tell a story. I re-cropped these photos a second time. In some cases I thought the facial expressions of the players were being missed due to all the extra information in the photo. I am happier with the second cropping. In some photos I left the full body to show the height of the jump or the other battle taking place. In other cases it is upper body to show the facial expressions.

I have a friend who loves black and white sports photos. I changed all the photos I chose for this collection into black and white photos. I chose several that I thought looked pretty cool and included them in this upload.

High School Boys Basketball – Pullman vs Cheney – Jan. 4, 2018

On January 4th , 2019 I took photos at the Pullman High School boys basketball game versus Cheney High School. Pullman entered the night with a Great Northern League (GNL) record of 3-0 with a 10-0 record overall. This league match-up of the Pullman High Greyhounds and the Cheney High Blackhawks was played in Pullman. Cheney entered the game with a 2-1 GNL and a 4-4 overall record.

After the first quarter of play Cheney lead Pullman 16 – 10. By halftime, however, Pullman had tied the score 22 all. In the second half of play Pullman extended their lead by 2 points. They got some breathing room down the stretch. Pullman won by a final score of 50 – 45. This moves Pullman to a league leading 4-0 record.

I went to the game with two cameras. I had my trust Canon 70D and my new Canon 6D Mark II. I used a couple different lenses. I ended up liking the 50mm f/1.8 prime and Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS II lenses the best.

I also had my new Spider Pro holster system in place. This is a belt worn holster that allow my cameras to sit securely on my hips rather than around the neck which causes neck and back pain. The system worked very well. By the end of the game my muscle memory was helping me switch the cameras quickly.

This was my first game shooting basketball. I stayed on one sideline for the entire game. In the first half I was on the Pullman end. The second half I was on Cheney’s end. This game me a chance to be close to Pullman when on Offense and on Defense.