Sean’s Basketball 2009

Sean is playing for his school team: The Saints. Because he’s small and because they didn’t have enough boys to field a 5th grade team, Sean is playing on both the 5th and 6th grade squads. The coach of the Saints, Mr. Savre knows what he’s doing. The Saints may not be the biggest team, or the fastest but the players know what they’re suppose to be doing and play as a team. This seems to make all the difference.

I’m not very interested in Basketball and I don’t think I can explain all the rules, but I like seeing Sean enjoy himself in sports. I also like photographing the actions. I got a new camera and this fast paced game teaches me more about my camera each time I photograph a game.

Thursday, January 22nd
Sean invited me to this doubleheader: The fifth grade and sixth grade teams were playing Nativity. He got the time wrong. By the time I showed up the game was over. I believe they lost both games. Sean was hot, exhausted, and hungry after playing two games in a row. Although it was below zero, he climbed in the van with his shorts on.

Tuesday, January 27th
Suzanne asked if I could pick up Sean after the games today. I had her double check the time because I wanted to catch both games. I packed up my camera. I brought my 70-200mm 4.5-5.6 zoom lens. Because I would be taking Sean home, I brought my 50mm 1.7 to photograph Clare. When I got to the game I found the zoom lens was too long for me follow the action. The lens wasn’t fast enough to be very useable with the available light. I was glad I brought my 50mm, because this lens was almost perfect for me. It was fast enough at  F2.2 and with the 1.5x multiplier I got a short telephone effect, which worked well. I haven’t developed the skill set to follow the action with a longer lens- like a 135mm.

Sean was a monster in the first game, and his hot hand helped in the second game (6th Graders). He even made an over the shoulder shot that would have been at home on any highlight reel. During the second game I thought coach Savre would bench Sean for most of the game, but Savre played Sean for most of the second game too. Sean isn’t the best player on the Sixth Grade team but had a hot hand and he showed a lot of spirit on the court and followed his assignments in a very professional manner. The Saints easily beat both teams by almost a 2:1 ratio.

In the Saints fan section, there were two parents with DSLRs so I felt right at home. I went up to Dean Roberts and reintroduced myself, “We met in Disney World last year.” He laughed, “I met your mom last week at basketball practice.”
On the way home I told Sean, “You were a monster in the first game. I can’t believe how much Savre played you. You played very well. I was impressed.”

The next day I processed the 100 plus photos. (I shot in RAW, so I have to process each image before creating a JPEG file.) Shooting Raw lets me re-balance the color, exposure, and cropping. In many ways this is a big help for someone learning photography, it teaches you what went wrong by letting you fix it! I also figured out how to rate and label images in the Adobe Bridge slideshow. (Don’t use the command key with the rating/label shortcuts.) This makes going through hundreds of photos much quicker, but I’m not complaining, this is one of my favorite parts of photography. I have also figured out how to write and tag my images in Bridge. It can be a chore writing all that metadata, but it needs to be done. I’ve been using multiple selections and tagging everything at once; then going back and fine tuning the Keywords and writing individual titles for images rated three stars or more.

Bob called Saturday from the Bison’s Men’s Basketball game: Sean and Paul were there. Sunday I wrote some code to pull the XMP data from my images into my database. I want to create a Saints basketball slide show using AutoView Flash image viewer for my web site [and probably this post. I will post it when I finish. Check back to see the results.] The AutoView program supports captions, but rather than type them in again, I would rather have my database suck the information out of the images and then format the XMP files for AutoView automatically.

Tuesday, February 3rd
Sean had a fifth grade game with Grace Lutheran. The school is close by and would finish before supper time. I packed my short zoom and my rebuilt 50mm 1.4 Rokkor X lens. I screwed the rear element out so I could focus all the way across the short gym. [I converted this lens from a MC Minolta mount to an AF Minolta mount but lost infinity focusing. I can make some adjustments unscrewing the rear element, but the lens gets very soft.] From the previous game I had difficulties with the auto focus and wanted to try my hand at manual focus. Although I need practice I found manual focus was much quicker and accurate than auto focus in sports.

Paul attended this game. I joined him in the stands where I photographed most of the action. There wasn’t much room on the sidelines and the gym was so small all the action took place close by.

The 5th grade Saints had no trouble dealing with the Grace Lutheran 5th graders.

When I reviewed the photos I found the softness of this 50mm lens was problematic: if I got the action centered;  if I remembered to focus; if I focused accurately (not easy with the Sony’s view finder) then the images would be good, if not the images could be wildly out of focus. The gym was well lit so having the extra speed wasn’t necessary; I wish I had used the 18-70mm zoom more.

Wednesday, February 4th
I asked Paul about this game yesterday, he told me Oak Grove had one of the nicest gyms in Fargo. It doesn’t hurt that it is close by. I also want to try my 50mm 1.7 Minolta AF lens, but manually focus it. Paul was sitting behind the Saint’s bench when I arrived. I sat down beside him and chatted about the St Joseph’s Kitchen Ventilation system for a while. There was plenty of room around the gym and one parent was on the sidelines with his DSLR so I went down myself. The Oak Grove 5th Graders gave a good game, but the Saints are better coached. The Saints came out to an early lead and built on it for most the game.

This 50mm lens works well and was easier to focus manually than I thought. I did find I got caught up in the action and would forget to focus or didn’t have time. The gym was well lit. I also set the camera to manual exposure because of an exposure issue I had at the last game. I was set at ISO 400, 1/200 second, and F2.8, which yielded an image about 1 stop underexposed. Easily fixed in Adobe Camera Raw. I found F2.8 to be a little too shallow depth of field, but still okay. I think if I could focus more accurately it wouldn’t be an issue.

The sixth grade game was faster paced. Sean was busy on the court, running all over the place. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Coach Savre yelled out, “Dobber, you are suppose to be setting up picks not running all over the gym.” Sean got another ear full during the next time out. I thought it was funny and the highlight of the game. After that Sean played better Offense and actually got a couple picks set up. Sean made some baskets but mostly fed the ball to other players with hotter hands.
There is a hallway to the locker rooms under one of the baskets. I positioned myself in the hall and got a clear shot of the activity under the basket. The Burd kid on the Saints was driving to the basket and all but knocking over the defender. The coach came off the sideline and yelled at the ref. The ref turned to me and in a low voice said, “It’s happening on both ends of the court.” He looked at me and I just shrugged, I have no opinion other than the Saints are outscoring the Oak Grove two-to-one, so if he did cut the team some slack it probably won’t help.
Sean came off the court; so I came off the sidelines. Dean Roberts was sitting in my seat. I said hello. Paul and the parents were talking about the game. Sean came off the bench and I took a position by the basket for the remainder of the game. In the final 30 seconds Sean tried to score one last basket. It didn’t work then he fed the ball to his friend Jake, but Jake couldn’t break free to put a shot up. The buzzer sounded and the game was over. One last photo of Paul and Sean.

Updates:

February 12th post about Tim’s basketball scrimmage and Sean’s double-header.

February 19th post about Sean’s double-header with one loss and one win.

Slide Shows

I used autoviewer to create five short slide shows. The slideshow starts when you click the white play button below the image. It hides out of the way until you hover your mouse over it. There are also back and forward buttons on either side of the image that also hide until you hover the mouse.

  • January 27th playing Park Christian, Sean has a very good first game ; he made some cool hot dog shots. Sean played well during the second game, he didn’t get much bench time in either game. I told him he was a ‘Monster.’ 32 images
  • February 2nd. The St Joseph Saints play the Grace Lutheran Royals. They easily win. I shot with my 50mm F1.4 Rokker so the images aren’t very sharp.
  • February 3rd. The St Joseph’s Saint 5th grade boys basketball team easily beat Oak Grove as do the 6th grade boys. 9 images
  • February 12th. The St Joseph 5th grade Saints play Park Christian. Sean returns to the game after a short academic suspension. The 6th grade hosts Park Christian. This was my first home game. 17 images
  • February 19th. Sean and the 5th grade St Joseph Saints play Oak Grove and lose 19 to 26. The Saints played without any enthusiasm. The 6th grade St Joseph Saints win 50 to 21. 19 images