It was the third home game of the season for the Plymouth Raiders at the Pavilions Basketball Arena last night and the team finally got their first win in front of the home crowd against the Guildford Heat with a slim four point lead at the close of the game. I’d never photographed basketball previously but I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on it already; the biggest problem being the terrible light in the arena (you’d think that a purpose built professional basketball arena would have great lighting… you’d be wrong) combined with the total ban on flash photography which prevents me from doing what I’d like to do which is to cross-light the court with a strobe on a high stand at each corner.
I enjoy a challenge however and a big part of being a working photographer is that you need to work around whatever issues are presented to you by the location (or subject… ho-ho) to produce great images for the client. To get around the light problems I ditched my usual sports set-up of a 70-200mm 2.8 and a 17-35mm 2.8 mounted on twin bodies and went with an 85mm 1.4 lens which gives me an extra two stops of light at the widest aperture and gets me the 500th of a second shutter speed required to freeze the action, at an acceptable 1000 ISO which renders the correct exposure while keeping the noise down to the level that ensures the images will reproduce well; the downside being that it lacks the range that I’m used to but the trade off is worth it.
In other Raiders news; some of the portraits that I shot of the players are now available as downloadable wallpapers at the Airwaves Plymouth Raiders website.
