You know how you say “… cross your T’s and dot you i’s…”? Well… you also know how you say… “$*%&@ happens!”… That was my night…. even though I thought I did the first, I ended up with some of the second…. Skip to the bottom if you want to read more about that…
Carson hosted Douglas Friday night for the last regular season basketball games. The Douglas Jr Varsity Boys inched away in the final minutes to take the win from Carson… you can see more of the action from those games in the photo galleries….
The Carson Varsity Girls took the win from the Douglas Girls… the game showed some signs of things to come next year with some of the match ups between “non-senior” players… should be some great positional battles next year! Here are a few photos from their game….
Here is one of those match ups… Douglas Freshman vs. Carson Junior… stay tuned for next year! 🙂
The boys game…
No matter which side you are on, this rivalry can make for some great games. Going into this one, after having seen both teams play… and having seen Carson “evolve” into the team they’ve become, I was expecting some exciting things… and this game delivered!
Here’s the Carson Student section during the Douglas Team introductions…
And the game QUICKLY went to this… quarterback vs. quarterback… oh wait, point guard vs. point guard… 😉 Loose ball, and NO ONE is backing down in this one!
Rough trying to defend the “BIG Man” underneath…
Hunter “flying” toward the basket…
The game became about the defense… you can see the scoreboard here… nearly 1/2 way through the fourth quarter and only 60 TOTAL points in the game… The “Twin Towers” for Douglas were formidable… and I hope remain so throughout the next week! Should be great to photograph!
… and on the other side of the hoop… can’t imagine trying to get inside for those higher percentage shots having the defenders looking down at you… 🙂 Good stuff!
This shot reminded me of my soccer days. The trick in any head to head sports is to get a 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 step… ANY amount of “space” away from your defender… Hunter is very good at doing this and that significantly helps with his “opportunities” for points.
… and Carson’s last “dance” toward the end of the game. Rafe’s got the Douglas player still on his… toe… 😉 Sorry…
Continued from above…
“$*%&@ happens!”
I should have known when I woke up in Vegas and made the decision to NOT go for a run but to pack and get to the airport early (due to the nasty weather in the Northeast…) that my day would have it’s “challenges”. I’ve been waiting for this game the ENTIRE season and I messed up…. Sometimes no matter how many times you think you’ve double checked things… do it again….
As I mentioned, I started my day at 6:15 AM in Las Vegas. I was at a photo convention for my Old Time Portrait studio… had a pretty good convention, my employee walked away with five photo competition ribbons, a first, a second and three fourth place!! We had our “Ball” at the end of the convention Thursday night and I was on my way home Friday morning… I’ve flown a fair amount… I’ve flown the Vegas Reno and visa-versa leg a lot since moving here for a lot of photo conferences in Vegas… I’ve NEVER see the Southwest line in Vegas THAT long… EVER… it was so long they didn’t have enough of their people containment strap thingies…. That was how my day started… the flight was great… but I was VERY tight on time getting home and leaving for the games…
I try very hard to be prepared… I’m human, I forget things sometimes (my wife would say often…). I tried very hard to cross my T’s and dot my i’s for this game and I went through everything a few times… but… well… I failed. And I’m pretty pissed about it… I know… eh, just show up and take a few snap shots right… NO!! Like a previous game I set up a remote camera behind the backboard knowing that Hunter and James would be playing… with big fellas under I was hoping for some “above the rim” action…
Here’s the backboard camera…
So… I had everything set up, exposure was set, batteries fresh, remotes working (although I was having trouble with the one sitting on the floor, it wasn’t “responsive” enough for my liking… still looking into that…), safety strap installed… I even raised the camera and lowered the angle this time to try to get some additional action more “under” the basket… … where did I fail?
I didn’t set, reset, check and double check the focus. And yes, I really do mean check it four times… it was off… and off just enough that not one of the images is OK in my book… At half time I checked the floor remote rig and reset the focus but I didn’t check the backboard camera after my initial setup… Guess what I’ll be doing for Regionals?
The slam dunk wasn’t much from above because of the closeness of where Hunter came from, just no way I can get something there unless I’m up in the rafters shooting down at the basket… 🙂
Nolan didn’t even flinch… so much so that at first I didn’t know exactly what had happened… he was trotting off to first, I had to check the photo… 🙂
With six more scheduled home night games for the Senators I’ve got some work to do on getting the white balance “right”… I’m not happy with it… so stay tuned… if you’re not familiar with what white balance is… Your camera is making a decision as to what “white” is… for the most part, Auto White Balance works pretty well… but the lights on the field can cause a great deal of variety of color and temperature of the colors… so the photos can come out looking different that what we might think it really looks like… there are in camera adjustments that can be made as well as software adjustments after in the computer… I like getting it “right” in camera… Next Thursday is the first of the six home night games… I’ll be working on it. 🙂
My “behind the backboard” camera is at the east end (stage end…) of the gym… so I missed Carson’s big first half with the two remote cameras…
