Project 365 - Day 6

Practice Makes Perfect

Oh, this wasn't pretty.  Tonight's self-assignment: shooting a bit at my 5th grade nephew's basketball game.  Shooting sports in general anywhere in general is difficult simply because of the size of the venues (wreaking havoc on DOF control) and fast moving action (wreaking havoc on focus control).  Shooting basketball-ESPECIALLY peewee basketball, with it's inherent chaos and lack of predictability-in an indoor gym is even more difficult.  Why?

Lighting....  Horrid, God-awful, garish, mixed lighting.  (The person who came up with the tungsten/fluorescent lighting mix clearly never tried to take a picture of their own kids in said lighting before designing that.)

I employed compensatory measures: shoot in RAW (for white balance control and detail) and wide open (speed = sharpness, but only if ya nail the focus), boost the ISO (helps in both those areas) and use burst mode (5 frames/sec to help catch a frozen moment between the missed ones).  I even "cheated" a bit by using the Program mode for some shots, though, happily, few of those worked out as well as when I used Aperture Priority.  Still, it takes a LOT of skill to anticipate THE shot.

Which skill I have yet to develop.  The damage: I took 85 shots; I have12 workable images-mostly of static subjects.  Don't get me wrong: many parents would find a LOT of what I reject perfectly acceptable...as snapshots.  But that's not what this is about.  I'm after intentionally capturing The Wow, not the Oh, That's Nice.  I am humbled by the knowledge this area is one beyond my reach.... 

But only for now.  This kind of thing is the "Devil" in "Of Devils and Details."

Lessons Learned

• Shooting in the RAW format (as opposed to JPG) makes white balance a breeze.  Notice the total lack of yellow cast?  See how natural and vibrant the colors are?  That's from RAW.

• Practice. 

• Practice.  

• Practice.  

"The difference between a master and a beginner is 10,000 mistakes."  Another 73 mistakes down.