What’s the darkest space you can think of? Midnight in the woods on a moonless night? Inside the womb? How about Arlington High School’s new gym? Correctly exposed, the ambient light inside the gym is 1/20 sec., f2.8, ISO 1000. I’ve seen more magnificently lit hallways. With light that bad, I have a hard time believing that the kids playing basketball can see the ball, much less shoot the darn thing at a two-foot hoop. Gyms like the one in Arlington are why I bust my back twice a week to haul 20 pounds of lighting gear in and out of high school gyms. When their light is so bad you can hardly see in it, bring your own!
Here is a “how to light a gym with one light” tutorial.
I’ve shoot at almost every high school gym in Snohomish County; that said, things always change and it’s a good idea to arrive early and check out the gym you’re shooting in. For example, Mariner High School use to have a horribly lit and poorly balanced gym. But over this summer, they remodeled it, renamed it “The Tank” and pumped in a ton of light, making it the best lit gym in the county. It’s almost light enough to shoot ambient, without strobes, but with them, the quality of the photo is just so much better.
When heading into the gym, I pick up my rosters and try to find a gym manager to let them know that I will be setting up a light in one of the corners. I try to find the least busy corner. Corners where the fans come in or where the teams enter and exit the court are bad because of the heavy foot traffic, so find one that looks lonely. Once you find your spot, make sure you have power. I use a Dyna-Lite 1000-watt wireless pack and a single head so I need access to power to plug in the pack. Normally, a gym will have lots of outlets, but bring an extension cord just in case. I loft my light stand as high as it will go, with my current stand that’s only about nine feet, and angle the head slightly up and against the wall. I’ve found that a bounce is MUCH better then direct light, even if you don’t have a reflector for the light head.
Here is a near court warm-up photo with the help of a strobe:
Here is a near court warm-up photo WITHOUT the strobe:
Notice the ISO and aperture change. Just using the ambient light is not really an option because to correctly expose the photo, the shutter speed would be too slow to stop sports motion effectively. Plus, the strobe just makes everything look sharper and helps balance the color.
I’ve been asked about multiple head and pack set-ups and I would agree that a multi-light set would be awesome, but since I only have one pack and two heads, I’ve made due with what I have. Shooting with strobes is somewhat limiting because you can only shoot one frame every second or so, whereas without the strobes, you can blast away at eight a second. You have to learn to time a jump, a shot, or a scramble and know when to fire your one frame. Once you practice and get it down though, the results are fantastic.
Okay, for you gear heads, here’s the list of heavy stuff:
Dyna-Lite 1000W/sec. wireless pack
Dyna-Lite 1040 head
Bogen 9’ light stand
Pocket-Wizard transmitter
Canon EOS-1D Mark II with 70-200mm lens
(Last season I shot with two bodies, one for the near court (24-70mm or 70-200mm) and one for the far court (300mm), both with transmitters. I managed to get myself, and my long body, trampled and in the excitement, the hotshoe broke and my second body can no longer fire strobes. Booo)
Alright, enough talk. Go now and shoot.
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