How to question.

Clixphoto

I'm not sure where to ask this question so it may need to be moved.

I was fortunate to win a contract to shoot a youth basketball league. This includes 32 teams and 8 groups of cheerleaders consisting of over 300 kids.

In the past they have taken the last practice (which is spread over 3 nights) and worn uniforms for pictures instead of actally practicing. The coordinator wants to do something different this year because he said that just didn't work.

All teams play on Saturdays. Games start at 8am starting with the youngest age group and end at 7pm with the oldest group. There are four or five age groups with at least 4 teams in each group.

Also the gym that they play in has only one court so floor shots with the goal in the background are out of the question.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Wes

Scott_Quier

Sounds to me like your are, currently, caught between the rock and the hard spot. The coordinator has indicated that past practice isn't the solution he's looking for this time around without giving you a clue of what he has in mind. At the same time, you don't have room to be creative as they court is dedicated to active practice/games.

Ideas:

• Talk to the coordinator to get a better handle on his/her expectations. He/she might have an idea. It's really hard to meet expectations without knowing what those might be.
• Do you have an opportunity to take the shots at another time, like before practice? Or, maybe, on another night?
• Do you have access to another shooting location? Or, is the shooting location a significant element of the photographs - like, "This is where we practices and played our games!" type of thing?

Not much help I'm sure ..... but I tried.:D

bob swanson

Having no idea of your weather situation but have you considered shooting the team shots outside? You could even set-up a background for individuals. Maybe the co-ordinator should have said instead of "different" , sucessful. Good luck. I've found these events extremely profitable.
bsvirginian

Clixphoto wrote:

I'm not sure where to ask this question so it may need to be moved.

I was fortunate to win a contract to shoot a youth basketball league. This includes 32 teams and 8 groups of cheerleaders consisting of over 300 kids.

In the past they have taken the last practice (which is spread over 3 nights) and worn uniforms for pictures instead of actally practicing. The coordinator wants to do something different this year because he said that just didn't work.

All teams play on Saturdays. Games start at 8am starting with the youngest age group and end at 7pm with the oldest group. There are four or five age groups with at least 4 teams in each group.

Also the gym that they play in has only one court so floor shots with the goal in the background are out of the question.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Wes

mike_k

My son is in such a league. On picture day the teams are asked to show up 30 minutes before game time. Pictures are taken in another room using a standard backdrop. This seems to work pretty well.

For T&I I'm not sure that having the goal in the background is really necessary.

Good luck!

Clixphoto

Thanks for the input. I have considered maybe before the games over about three weekends. If I choode this I wll have to set up some kind of background in a classroom. Any suggestions for large backdrops big enough for a 10 man team plus coaches?

Thanks again,
Wes

mike_k

The guy who did the pictures this year used something like:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/302962-REG/Botero_SC004816__004_Super_Collapsible_Background.html
It seemed to work fine.

bob swanson

There are many background suppliers on the market. MY guess is that you'll need at least a 10'x20' muslin. There are plenty of examples of the different backgrounds on my site www.bsvirginian.smugmug.com

takeflightphoto

Another solution (if you want to put some sort of basketball background and cant use the gym) is to shoot a background, then use a chromakey green backdrop and key software to put the teams over the background. Might be more work and expense than you want to go through, though.