Hoops Sportrait

I feel like my best portraits usually come by accident.

I always have a plan for one or two basic, traditional shots. Bring along a couple of Speedlites. Use the logo at halfcourt as a background. Try a goofy one where they're spinning or tossing the ball, or looking somewhere between serious/silly/smiley. That kind of thing.

Then I try to liven up the shoot. Walk around. Engage with the subject. Try to cull some emotion or passion, and use that to build a portrait. Something spontaneous.

So that's what happened today. I had a portrait with a college basketball player. Banged out a few with a one-light setup ... one speedlite with a Profoto medium softbox. Got a few reasonable ones.

But nothing spectacular. I always want stuff on the fly ... gimme my 5DIII and a 50mm and let's just bounce around for a bit. So that's what we did.

We came to the coach's office door, which is adjacent to the gym. It's a great purple color, and it had the names of all the graduating players from year's past. Very cool. Very unique. So I told her to sit down on the floor and just relax. We talked for a bit. And then, the men's basketball team started practicing on the court, not far away.

PERFECT. We're both watching, and I ask her to tell me about some of the guys on the team. She looks over, starts talking and smiling, and I bang out some frames.

Here and there: Hoops stuff

Some photos from hoops season. Found some different looks as the season wore on: wide-angle lense shooting up from the floor (typical remote-camera look in NBA) and telephoto from the stands.

Gear: Nikon D300S; Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8
Settings: f/2.8, 1/400th of a second, ISO 4000, 17mm
Thought: Love this as a scene-setter. Colorful gym. Stands are packed. Action on the court. Cool snap. (Also. Yeah, it's noisy. It wasn't shot with a 1DX or D4. There's probably some motion blur. But you don't need a $10K setup to take a unique, engaging sports photo.)

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Gear: Canon 5D Mark III; Canon 50mm f/1.8 II

Settings: f/2.8, 1/1,000th of a second, ISO 10,000, 50mm

Thought: Good, vertical action. Love being able to shoot right under the hoop for shots like this. Usually I like to crop nice and tight to focus the action, but I think this works as a full-body shot.

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Gear: Canon 5D Mark III; Canon 50mm f/1.8 II
Settings: f/2.8, 1/1,000th of a second, ISO 10,000, 50mm
Thought: This is a heavy crop from vertical. Opposite to the photo above this one, I whittled it down to the necessary points in the frame. And the quality held up, and now it's engaging across the image.

NBA Hoops: 76ers at Cavaliers