Yesterday, I was able to watch my brother and his friends play at a commercial basketball league held at Pioneer in Mandaluyong. It was my first time to watch them play kickass ball. Most of the players in their team have an age ranging from 25 to 30 years old while the opposing team (All Clear) have the same usual age range but have a noticeable player that is probably as old as Jaworski. However, I was not there to cheer “defense” or “get that ball” but my purpose of going there is to take pictures of the game. Having experienced sports photography for the first time, I could say that it is indeed hard to take nice shots of people changing movements at a blink of an eye. It’s hard to capture those winning lay-ups, three-pointers and even the emotions being shown by a player that have received a foul call from the referee. In this kind of endeavor, you should have a quick eye and must have a full knowledge of your equipment.
Test shots before the actual game must be made. Or the best thing that you could do is to be at their practices so that you would know the move of each player or perhaps watch a game so that you would know how each player would react to certain situations. I like shots that do not only portray their basketball moves per se but as well as their emotions.
Sometimes, one may really be good at composition but is being slowed up by capturing that moment because of the limitations of his or her equipment. Since I was using a digital camera for this one, I was not able to achieve my expected results. The first problem is the optical zoom (3x) capability of my camera. The only thing that could eliminate the optical zoom problem is by attaching an adaptor to it and then attaching a zoom lens and taking the shots in macro mode. However, I’ll just opt to wait for the time to get my hands on a digital SLR. Hehe!
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