Hey, it's January! Must be basketball season!

I'm kidding, of course. Basketball season started all the way back in November, but as SDY has pointed out in the comments section (multiple times, I might add) I've been so occupied with football that I haven't yet written anything about hoops.

If you're one of the readers who looks at the TINY, TINY names beneath the photos both in the paper and online, you'll know that I have been shooting basketball on and off since the beginning of the season.

(By the way, if you HAVE been checking out photo credits, you're either 1) my mom, checking to make sure I'm still employed, or 2) in need of better extracurricular activities. I jest, of course, I sincerely appreciate everyone who notices my work!)

Today I intend to just touch on the basics of shooting basketball, and then will delve into greater detail (strobes! remote cameras!) in the coming weeks.

Just as the sports of football and basketball are so vastly different, as are the sports to photograph.

In football, I can wander the edges of the field (except in the bench areas). In basketball, I'm confined to a spot on one of the baselines, and I really can't move very much.

In football, 80% of all the images I shoot are on my longest lens (usually a 400mm lens). In basketball, I shoot more or less a 50-50 percentage between my long lens and my shorter lenses.

When the action is in the front court (near me), the typical lens choice is a 70-200mm zoom if I'm sitting "wide" — i.e, out towards the corner of the court.

From the corner of the court at KeyArena, I made this frame of Seattle's Earl Watson driving to the basket between two Milwaukee defenders. The 70-200mm lens gives me a nice clean look at action around the basket.
(Canon EOS 1D Mark IIN, 70-200mm f2.8 lens (set at 100mm), ISO 200, 1/250 sec @ f5.6 with strobes*)

If I'm sitting closer to beneath the basket, I might favor a 24-70mm zoom lens.

For this picture of Washington's Justin Dentmon against Portland State, I'm sitting closer to underneath the basket, just outside of the "key" area (the painted area around the free throw lane). Here, the wider angle of a 24-70mm lens lets me capture more of the action from a closer point-of-view. A wide-angle also doesn't "compress" the action as much as a telephoto lens does, so bodies flying around really have a more "chaotic" (for lack of a better word) feel to them in the photo. Lastly, with a wider lens you naturally see more of the background. (Canon EOS 1D Mark IIN, 24-70mm f2.8 lens (set at 24mm), ISO 200, 1/250 sec @ f5.6 with strobes*)

For downcourt shots (when the action is at the opposite basket), I will normally use a 300mm lens, and occasionally a 400mm lens.

Seattle's Chris Wilcox pins the ball against the backboard in action against San Antonio's Tim Duncan back in December. This is shot from my spot on the opposite end of the court. The longer 300mm lens compresses the field of view, making things appear to be slightly closer together (whereas a wide-angle lens can make things appear to be slightly further apart than they actually are). The long lens allows me to shoot the opposite end when the ball is downcourt, and a switch to a shorter lens as the ball comes towards me.
(Canon EOS 1D Mark IIN, 300mm f2.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/250 sec @ f5.6 with strobes*)

(*You'll notice I mentioned that the photos were shot with "strobes". That means the photos were shot with the help of strobe lights, or "flash", as opposed to the ambient light of the arena. I will explain how I use strobes in arenas in an upcoming post.)