PHOTO DUMP 01: Taking Photos at Madison Square Garden
Omg
If you’ve read my graceball newsletter you might have heard me talk about my passionate love of the New York Knicks. With this, comes a sentimental attachment to the greatest arena in sports, Madison Square Garden, AKA the Mecca AKA the Cathedral of Basketball AKA one of my favorite places period.
Needless to say that getting to take photos here was an incredible privilege and honor. Thank you to St John’s for allowing to me to do so, I am deeply grateful.
Now lets get into the action!
My biggest concern going into the Garden was the lighting. It is notorious dim and warmly lit (which is what I love about it on TV, but hate about it for photography), and I have a camera that does not excel in low light conditions.
Thankfully it was not as bad as I thought it might be, and I hung around 1/1000 SS, 1/1250 ISO and f/2.8 the whole game.
I started off with some wide angle shots with my 17-55 2.8
I was really keen on getting the ceiling, so that was my main focus pregame and during warmups.
I also had a star filter on both my 17-55 and my 70-200 because I saw Evan Yu do it and knew I had to take advantage of those Garden high hats.
I would also like to note that this entire game was just a justification 85mm being perfect for basketball, mostly because I didn’t have that focal length available to me. Because my 70-200 was on a crop sensor, it was great for the opposite side of the court action, equating to approximately a 100-300, but for under the basket action my 17-55 EFS was too short and my 70-200 EF was almost too long. I will opt for 85 mm 1.8 (approx 50mm for the crop) in the future when I purchase it :)
Once we got in game, I stayed on the floor of the shooting side for the entire first half. These were some of my favorite shots
When I edited these I was happy with the color but looking back they may be too yellow / orange. Part of me hates that because, well, it look to yellow / orange, but part of me feels like it gives the warmth of MSG in the photos. Jury is out.
I also once again just struggled with autofocus. Basketball is the hardest sport for me with regards to focusing because everything is moving so fast and people are constantly going in and out of frame. The middle first portrait image of this set I love but is ever so slightly out of focus and its driving me crazy :)
My favorite overall image is the first of this set. I was able to catch her reaction to a clutch 3 and got the inside framing of the opponent. It is not the sharpest image but definitely not out of focus.
The second half I moved around a lot more. I wanted to try and get some high angles and experiment with shutter speed. Here are some of my favorites
LOVE the first of this set— the 3 ball reaction with the teammate celly 3 is perfect. I wish it was more in focus and didn’t have ISO noise on it. The slow shutter speed image is far from my best but still interesting. I always try and work a few into a session to experiment since you never know what you are going to get.
Bottom two have some ISO / editing tweaks that could be made, I’m glad I moved around to get some variety even if I didn’t like these as much as the first half shots.
Overall happy with my mix of images, portrait, reaction, action but definitely feel like my edit choices and autofocus can continue to improve.
Thanks again to SJU for having me fulfill a very cool dream of being on the Garden floor. I hope to be back soon! <3
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Sick! Great work. Tried it once—shooting sports is HARD