High School Basketball
State Championships
High school basketball, state championships, girls and boys, Class B… good stuff. Another test.
The light was absolutely horrible. I’ve never seen a venue that was lit worse. What I imagine a high school gym from the 1950’s must have looked like. The action, on the other hand, was excellent. These kids showed a lot of grit.
I ditched the 400/2.8 after the first day. Working at 1/640 at 2.8 at 640 ISO is fine… I suppose. The problem was the backgrounds. There was lots of distractions like lighted signage that overpowered the images and made it hard to find a shooting window. The frustration wasn’t worth it.
So I mainly worked with the 55 1.8 and the 135 1.8. I eventually settled around 1/1000 at f2.0 at 2500 ISO for my camera settings.
Occasionally the bright backgrounds do payoff, but the ruin more shots than they make.
The other option is to embrace it. Which would be next to impossible, or at least awkward looking without the flip up monitors we all have access to these days.
The highlight of the tournament was when the Native American teams matched up. You’ve never seen basketball like this. The whole place was simply electric.
That’s how I first came to Montana. I was assigned by Sports Illustrated to shoot on profile on the Lodge Grass team (in orange) back in 1992. Here’s the story by Gary Smith (one of the best writers I ever worked with).
Evidently Time/Life didn’t license my images for online use, so there are some stock images used instead. Maybe I’ll share my take some day.
Here’s the publisher’s letter from that issue. It gives some insight into the piece, but still no pictures though.
Interesting to note… most of the photographers covering the games only shot their own teams. They didn’t bother making pictures of the other games.
It’s sad, because there are some pictures to be had.
Once again, lots of ink. We’re finding a path.