While out shooting my friend Rusty Perez for a possible album cover, I noticed a fountain at the venue he was playing. It would randomly spurt out of the ground in very well defined columns and would vary in both height and timing.

I had my SB900 and took my time to focus. The spout would only be in frame for a moment or two, so I had to manually pre-focus as best I could. Then I had to wait for the water in that particular jet to enter the frame, whereupon I would press the shutter.

It took some time to get the focus down and not get a lot of the background lights, stores, and people in the frame, but when I got it right, I got some great images. I like the way the water drops are frozen in the air, which is not due to shutter speed, but to the SB900 flash.

The lesson is to be ready for something different that the “planned” shot. Take advantage of the situation and don’t let your vision become so narrow that you miss an opportunity to capture the unexpected.

You can see all of the images at The Nature Light Photography Gallery.

What Did I Learn?

This was a new challenge. I have never shot sports inside before. Water polo and swimming? Yes. Softball? Yes. Rodeo? Yes. But never indoor basketball.

I have read where the lighting situation inside most high school gyms is difficult. JEEZ!! Is that true!!!! My plan was to take my SB600 and shoot with a fairly fast piece of glass, the 70-200 f2/8. It worked. Kind of.

While the flash did freeze the action fairly well, focus was a bit of a problem. The lens wouldn’t lock on to subjects well and fast enough. I think this is due to the very low light conditions and the difficulty of following the subject.

I basically planted myself under one basket and shot from a seated position. The length of the lens made it difficult to keep the subject in the viewfinder as they came closer to my end of the court and the proximity of the players made good composition difficult. You can see my results here.

You can see the limited field of view and difficulty of composition.

I brought my 50mm f1.4 also, but it limited my ability to isolate the players or what I wanted to shoot. I also had the D70 kit lens, a 18-70mm f3.5-4.5, but I didn’t think that it was fast enough. But I wasn’t getting the shots I wanted or needed, so I tried it.

I was surprised. It focused quickly, the flash froze the subjects well, and the images were usable!! The subjects weren’t too close for a good composition and I could compose fairly well.

With a wider lens, the composition is better.

The only problem was that the on camera flash left some weird shadows behind the subjects. It’s not the lens, but me not utilizing the flash well.

Harsh shadows caused by on camera flash.

I think I really need a better flash, something like a SB900 and some sort of remote to fire it off from a distance. I have seen sports shooters utilize two flashes mounted on stands placed at the corners of the floor and triggered by remotes such as Radio Poppers or Pocket Wizards. I would like to try that set-up next time.

The bottom line is that next time I WILL get the flash off of the camera and try to get two flashes that I can work together to improve the lighting situation.

All-in-all, I think it was a good shoot. OH, and the staff won!!!