Assane Sene – Virginia’s intimidating 7 foot first-year
Assane Sene has played in most of Virginia’s games this season — eight games so far. I’m really impressed with this guy’s intensity on and off the court. When he and/or his team makes a big play, he shows it. When he misses a few free throws you can tell he’s ticked at himself. This shot is of him defending an inbound baseline pass against Brown University — an intimidating force for anyone to try and throw a basketball past. It’s great to see and be able to photograph someone with so much enthusiasm and emotion on the court.
Xavier’s Kenny Frease from Above
The #22 Xavier men’s NCAA basketball team came to town to play UVA. Remote camera and Pocketwizard Gremlins appear to have been tamed and things started clicking for the first time in several games. This image was taken from the catwalk above one of the baskets. Since I cannot consistently lag my Canon 1D Mark III (shutter lag values range all over the place), I occasionally use this body up from above with either my 180mm macro lens (as I did today) or 70-200mm and set to shoot on ambient light. I place it on the side of the court where I’m sitting shooting with my hand held — every time I fire my hand held camera this remote is listening on the same channel as the strobes are and it fires 4-6 frames each time. The result is that I often get several frames in an aerial view of a good play where I only can get one shot with my strobed hand held. It’s a nice combination.
Women’s NCAA Hoops – Key Play
Enonge Stovall (40) grabbed an offensive rebound off a missed free throw with 22 seconds left and the score UVA 60 Georgia 58. She was also fouled on the play by Porsha Phillips (21) and made both of her free throw attempts to seal the game (final score 62-60) for the Cavaliers. This was one of the more exciting hoops games at JPJ in a while. Virginia was down by as much as 5 in the second half and rallied to retake the lead in the final minutes. This was the second SEC team that UVA has defeated this year (they beat Tennessee on the road earlier). Shooting wise, it was a good start to the New Year.
The only problem with tonight’s game was related to my Multimax that is triggered (on a delay) for my remote cameras. The other Multimax on my system (which my hand held camera uses to fire the strobes) was doing fine, no problems… nothing but crickets on the remote MM. Headed up to the catwalk and discovered a new error message on the MM saying something to the effect “Auto Shutdown Initiated. Power cycle to turn on.” It’s fascinating to me that if the MM powered down on it’s own, that it was nice enough to stay awake to display this message. Why couldn’t it just stay awake and receive transmissions like it’s supposed to? Thus, combined with all the other troubles experienced with this part of my system earlier in the year, that it definitely is related to the power source. So, I just put in batteries and it worked perfectly the rest of the game… it’s going to really suck to have to haul up to the catwalk before and after every game to take care of batteries and powering off the radio, but looks like that’s the current solution until I can get another power supply.
This was the only remote shot that really worked out tonight – I’m still struggling to find a decent angle to position my backboard remotes for the women’s games. Generally a more vertical angle (i.e. straight down) seems to work better, whereas for the men, roughly 45 degrees seems to work. Different camera positions (high, low, wide, etc) with respect to the glass also change things. As ACC season is starting up soon, I’m getting close to locking down exactly the way I want it. The men play #22 Xavier (who broke my 70-200mm lens hood with an errant shot in their shoot around this afternoon) tomorrow… argh.
UVA’s Keith Payne auditioning for Superman
This is one of my favorite football photos of all time. It’s from the 2007 season. Virginia running back Keith Payne – a large dude – decided to see how far and how high he could fly with the football. It was an amazing play — only dampened slightly by the fact that he landed just short of the end zone. It didn’t matter, as UVA went on to score a TD and squeaked out a win over Connecticut 17-16. I created this image laying down on my stomach in the back of the end zone. It was shot with my Canon Mark IIN, Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras
Mike Scott’s one handed rebound
Wow. The Hoos’ finally dispatched of an opponent the way many fans expect them to do with every team they play. Virginia, led by Mike Scott’s game high 17 points and 15 boards (a one-handed version is pictured above), dispatched of the Hampton University Pirates 74-48 at the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, VA on December 23, 2008. For me, this was a particularly fun game, given the proximity to the Christmas holiday — the arena was largely empty, the usual radio interference problems with my remotes was non-existent, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood.
More images from this game…
Happy Holidays to all!
