Shooting the Rival Game

Saturday, what an exciting day it was. That was the day of the basketball game between Virginia Commonwealth and University of Richmond, a big rival game for our city. Even though the game didn't start until 7:30, our day started around 12. We had a lot of equipment to set up prior to the game, and because the women's team played before the men, we had to show up even earlier. It was a good learning experience. We set up multiple remote cameras that would fire through a setup of pocket wizards and endless amount of wires. One camera we had setup on some bogen clamps, mounted to the backboard, looking through the glass. A really cool shot, but you have to set it up right, in manual focus (tape down the focus so it doesn't change), theres a lot of specifications you need to follow as well. Everything has to be black, so not to distract the players or referees on the court, anything that isn't, must be covered with gaffers tape, a best friend of us photographers. You must also make sure everything is reinforced with a second clamp, so it doesn't fall on someones head. For these type of shots you want to use a lens somewhere around 15mm, so you can get a wide angle of the action. We also set up a 14mm fisheye lens that looked straight down under the basketball, so you can get some action on the paint (rebounds, slam dunks, etc.). Besides the cameras, you have to set up strobes, so you can get more desirable photographs, we had 4 set up, one at each corner, two were set up in the rafters, the other two on 20 or so foot booms, to keep them elevated. The pain was getting the strobes to all sync up to the cameras, including the ones that fired remotely, so no matter which camera was going off, all 4 strobes would fire. I'm still figuring out how it all works, kind of overwhelming when you go from shooting with one camera, to shoot 7, so its takes a little getting used to. There were just so many wires that I couldn't understand what was going where, I'll get more accustomed to it once I set it up a few more times. On his 70-200mm camera, there were 2 triggers, both controlling the cameras in the backboard, which was on our end of the court. The 3rd trigger was set on the 300mm camera, used to photograph the action on the other side of the court. From what I can tell, the trigger was made of individual switches he made into a homemade switchboard, each trigger plugged into a pocket wizard, firing the cameras remotely. Besides that, I think all the strobes were also connected into a pocket wizard, so they'd fire simultaneously with the cameras, can't tell you how exactly it works at this time though.

Not only was it a lot of work to set it all up, but once the game is over, then the fun part comes. PACKING IT ALL UP. Coming to the game, we had something like 6 cases full of camera equipment, including around 6 cameras, a mess of lens, flashes, clamps, brackets, just about anything you can think off. One case was basically dedicated to carrying a miles worth of cables. It was a lot of fun untangling it all too. Anyways, I dont want to go into too much more detail, just wanted to document my day. It was a lot of fun, but definitely realized all the work that goes into getting great images. It doesn't bother me much though, i'm not discouraged about the work involved into photographing sports, I think its well worth the effort.