Cheap Shots

It starts with the assignment:

Then I gather up 2 cameras, a spare battery, credentials and parking pass.

Park in the parking structure.

Head downstairs to the media room for a roster.

Arrive upstairs early to claim my shooting spot near the visitors bench. We sit on the floor just behind the orange dotted line. My preference is to shoot from the three point line, just to the left of the blue tape on the floor in the bottom of this photo.

The blue tape is the spot reserved for the OSU Sports Information photographers.

We have to wait for the dancers to finish before we can sit down.

We will spend the two hours sitting cross-legged, it is tougher than you think. Some photographers will use a padded camp chair.

Here I am in action, when the hat is on backwards I am in shooting mode.

The offense passes the ball a lot.

Did I mention the offense passes the ball a lot?

About a third of the time our view is blocked by:

This year there are some new lights at the floor entrances. They are pretty distracting in photos, so we now avoid shooting when they are in the background.

At halftime we switch sides. At this game A.C. Green and David Lucas started a wave that went around the inside of Gill several times.

During the second half we share floor space with the dancers.

Because we are closer to the home bench in the second half we also watch for photos of the coaches.

Sometimes you have to dodge the ball as it goes out-of-bounds. This happened to me twice this game.

If the game is not close you can slip out with a couple minutes to go and beat the traffic, with close games you stay and try to capture the game-winning photo. Rather than fight traffic after a close game I will go downstairs for the press conference.

Then it is back to the office to download the images, choose photos that match the game story, tone and caption the photos before deadline.

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