Jazz vs. Trailblazers - NBA Action

October 24, 2006

I’m working on a series of posts about shooting NBA basketball. And instead of a big, long post covering everything, I’m going to start breaking things down into smaller bites. I’ll be writing a lot more about shooting Jazz basketball, including some behind-the-scenes stuff. For now, shooting action. Below I’ve posted my three favorite action shots from last night’s game. You’ll notice the original full frame and the cropped, toned version of each.

Andrei Kirilenko had six blocks, so I was glad to catch a good shot of one. This image was captured with a 400mm lens and available light.

The crop (above) brings us right into the action and cuts out distracting elements. I’ve done some light burning on the lower half of the frame.

Utah Jazz guard Ronnie Brewer (left) picks up the loose ball ahead of Portland Trail Blazers guard Brandon Roy.

Again, I’ve cropped to the important elements and did a slight dodge to lighten the players’ faces. I’ve also burned down the background just a little to keep your eye on the players’ faces. When I do a burn like this, it’s the same as I would have done in the darkroom 10 years ago. A one-stop burn. I have the adjustment programmed in as a macro in PhotoShop so it only does a one-stop adjustment. Any more and I wouldn’t be comfortable ethically.

This shot is just your basic Carlos Boozer dunk. This was a fast break, so I barely got the camera up in time. That’s why the original frame is very loose. (I’m using two cameras- one for each end of the court.) It’s also tinted green, thanks to the fancy new light strip in the Delta Center that flashes blue, green, or red depending on the advert they’re displaying.

The finished version is cropped in really tight and the color is corrected. Since we’re starting with an eight-megapixel image, even this tight crop works very well in newsprint and on the Web.

This post also appeard on my work blog, on the Tribune’s website.

Posted by trent | Filed Under On Assignment, Photographs, Trent 

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Comments

One Comment to “Jazz vs. Trailblazers - NBA Action”

  1. gerry on October 24th, 2006 3:52 pm

    Ahhh … arena light strips — a pleasure, aren’t they? They put one up around Paige (err … Mizzou) Arena and it was a nightmare before our strobes were up. No real big color casts, thankfully, but a good bit of jumping in the exposure department.

    Anyway, keep up with the postings about the “daily grind” of newspaper photography. I’m sure readers are learning something valuable, especially those hitting the Trib blog. Thanks for doing this.

    - g -

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