Last night's Sonics game was only the second regular season game I've shot this year. Amazing how football can dominate an entire part of one's calendar.

So I was shaking off a bit of rust (and if you saw my photos from the UW men's basketball game earlier this week, you saw first hand how rusty I was). In trying to get back into the swing of basketball, my strategy was to just hammer on the motordrive as hard as I could.

1,000 frames, 2,000 frames, who cares? I figured, I can edit fast.

Correction: Hammering on the motordrive just leaves you with a bunch of crappy frames.

Live and learn, right?

One challenge was a 7:30 tipoff time, which is something the Sonics do on Friday nights, instead of their usual 7:00pm starts.

That 30 minute difference meant that I probably would be able to shoot one less quarter of the game than I usually do before having to edit and transmit.

And with the game slated as the centerpiece for Saturday's sports section, I not only had to make a picture, I had to actually make a pretty good one.

(Kidding. According to my boss, I'm supposed to make a pretty good one each time out. He's such a hard-ass).

Sonics rookie and superstar-in-the-making Kevin Durant gave me an early Christmas present in the first half when he drove along the left baseline and double-pumped his way through two Toronto defenders:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 70-200mm/f2.8 lens @ 70mm, ISO 1600, 1/500 sec., f2.8)

I figured he owed me that one since he'd also had two high-flying dunks that came from my side of the hoop, meaning I was shooting him from behind.

Durant caught fire in the second half, and finished with a game-high 27 points. I caught a good expression after he nailed his final three-pointer of the night:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 70-200mm/f2.8 lens @ 155mm, ISO 1600, 1/500 sec., f2.8)

My other decent frame of the night came courtesy of Seattle's Wally Szczerbiak, who was grabbed by Toronto's Carlos Delfino:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 24-70mm/f2.8 lens @ 38mm, ISO 1600, 1/500 sec., f2.8)

I moved two versions, and I'm pretty sure the tighter one has more impact:

(Canon EOS 1D Mark III, EF 24-70mm/f2.8 lens @ 38mm, ISO 1600, 1/500 sec., f2.8)