A New Season

With November here football is wrapping up at the small college level. One more week for NAIA schools and the playoffs begin the following weekend.

The first games of the basketball season began over the past week. I had my first opportunity to cover a game this weekend. Here are a few images from the game. Enjoy!

The details: Nikon D7000 & Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8. Post in Photo Mechanic and ACR 7

Bulldog Basketball

It has been a busy season here in the early winter. I haven't been outdoors to do much shooting, and the weather hasn't been cooperative either. But I have enjoyed following the McPherson College Men's Basketball team.

These images are some of my favorites from the four games we've been able to attend:


Sr. G Aaron Frasier (1) and Sr. F Jordan Crawford (23) rebound against Hastings College

Jr. G Adam Bruner (24) and So. F Joey Powers (13) defend against Hastings

Jordan Crawford meets the ball handler against Tabor College

So. G Samson Shivers (15) drives against Univ. of St. Mary

Aaron Frasier soars to the basket against USM

Fr. G Kenny Berry, Jr. (12) handles the ball out front versus Rockhurst Univ.

Samson Shivers takes it to the basket against Rockhurst

The Hastings game was shot with the D90. The other games were shot with the D7000. All images are taken with the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8, processing in ACR and CS5.

The Bulldogs are Hot !!

After several weeks we had another opportunity to go to see the McPherson College Bulldogs play basketball. This past Saturday the 'Dogs played their in-county rivals the Swedes of Bethany College.

The Bulldog Men's team have gotten hot at the right time of the season. After a slow start they have won eight straight games, include Saturday night's contest, an 81 - 68 victory.

These photos are from Saturday's action

The team is playing with speed and control. They made the extra pass to get the open look all night. They have developed good depth in their bench rotation as well. The 'Dogs have set themselves up to have a first round home game in the KCAC post-season tourney.

These images are from my new D7000. All were shot with the 70-200 f/2.8 VR I lens. These were all shot at 3200 ISO and 1/350s. You can see more images in the Sports gallery on my website.

There is still some noise in the background of these images, but within the plane of the depth of field you can get great sharpness. These were post-processed in ACR, including white balance, noise reduction and the first pass of sharpening. I have shot white balance reference photos at several points on the court and I have put together a processing preset for this gym.

Rebound !

Welcome McPherson Bulldog Fans! Click on this link to see more images from 2010 - 2011 Bulldog Sports!

We had our first chance to photograph the McPherson College Women's basketball team this weekend. The game was a close fight, but the Lady Bulldogs came out on the short end of the score 44 - 49.

The Sport Center gym is a typical small sports venue: Dark !

I am working with my new Nikon D7000 to see how much improvement there is with the ISO noise processing. I can see a definite difference. But at 3200 ISO there is still noise. These images have been converted from NEF to JPEG, WB adjusted and noise reduction applied in Camera Raw. Additional sharpening and resizing performed in Photoshop.

Despite the noise, the sharpness that the camera can provide can be incredible. But the camera can also point out all your little errors like hand shake. It will be fun, and a challenge, to master this camera!

Sports Shooting - McPherson College Men vs. Friends University

Between being very busy at work, and being under the weather the last weekend, I haven't been out to shoot since the basketball games in McPherson two weekends ago.

Shortly after the games I posted the photos from the women's game. Here are the photos from the men's game.

Sports Shooting - McPherson College and Friends University Women

Sports Shooting - McPherson College vs. Kansas Wesleyan

We spent Saturday night at the new Mabee Gym on the campus of Kansas Wesleyan University. The McPherson Bulldogs were in town to play the Coyotes.

The first half of the men's game was a tight-fought battle. But in the second half the Coyote's used great shooting and a tight zone defense to soundly defeat the Bulldogs.

Being a new gym, the lighting is better than most of the venues where we follow the Bulldogs. These men's photos were shot at ISO 2500, F/2.8, 1/400s and NEF format. At that ISO the raw images are very noisy. The images were about 1/3 of a stop underexposed. The lights also have a yellowish cast. These photos have been processed through DxO for exposure, white balance/tint, and noise reduction. Cropping and sharpening were done in Capture NX2.



I received a 18% grey card for Christmas, and this was the first opportunity that I've had to experiment with it. I took images of the card lying on the floor at various locations around the basketball court. I used each image to determine a white balance and tint adjustment. I then used these results to load and save a location setting for bulk processing the images. I was really happy how well (and how easily) the adjustments worked.

Sports Shooting - McPherson Basketball vs. Univ. of St. Marys

Saturday evening we attended the McPherson College vs. University of St. Mary basketball games at the USM  gym in Leavenworth, KS.  The Bulldog Men carried the evening to move to a 13-2 overall record and a 6-0 record in the KCAC. The Bulldogs have been receiving votes, but have not yet made the NAIA Division II Top 25.

The Bulldogs quickly jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the first half.  Sophomore G Aaron Frazier bucketed 13 points to lead the Mac men to a 45-38 half time lead.

The Spires continued to battle the Bulldogs in the second half.  A 22-6 run by USM pulled them to within four with under a minute left in the game.   McPherson went on to force several turnovers and hit 6 of 6 free throws to keep the lead and the win 100-94.  Senior guard Mike Reese scored 27 to lead the Bulldogs over the Spires.

Shooting in this gym is very difficult.  There is a 2.5 stop difference in the lighting between mid-court and the baseline area under the baskets.  The lighting is a mix of traditional incandesent, high intensity vapor, and fluoresent.  Takes a lot of adjustment!



The images were shot in NEF. They were first processed through DxO for exposure (0.5 to 1.25 stops), tint (taking out the green effect of the fluoresents) and noise, saved as JPG. Cropping and final color adjustments were done in Capture NX2.

Sports Shooting - Basketball Updated

It was a gray and gloomy weekend in Kansas City. No good photo light. I took the opportunity to wrap-up my Christmas shopping and some other year-end tasks.

A week-ago I posted some basketball photos from the McPherson - Ottawa games.  Those images were quick grabs after some initial post-processing.  I took the time this weekend to do some more processing, primarily color- and better exposure correction and cropping.  They can now be viewed through the original blog post.  Follow the link to see them.

The men have done well since last week.  They went 2-0 for the week, and go into the break 10-2.  The ladies dropped their two games and are now 4-7.

Sports Shooting: McPherson - Ottawa Basketball

Our weekend schedule this winter does not line up nearly as well with basketball as it did with the football season this fall. We took advantage of an alignment of the stars to spend the weekend with our daughter and younger son. This gave us the opportunity to see the Neil Simon play "Rumors" put on by the McPherson College theatre department, and the McPherson mens and womens Basketball teams play Ottawa University.

Shooting indoor sports is a challenge. The light in high school and small college gyms is dim and spotty by photographic standards. In the McPherson Sports Center the baseline of the court is darker by a full stop (or more) than the mid-court area between the two free throw lines. I've shot in this gym before and I knew the challenges that I would face. Even when you start with a good f/2.8 lens the compromise you often have to make is tp underexpose or shoot at high ISO settings in order to freeze action. This results in noisy (grainy) photos.

The womens team opened the evening with a 69-61 victory over the Lady Braves. This was one of the Lady Bulldog's better efforts from the field and on defense this season. The Lady Bulldogs are 4-5 overall and 1-1 in conference.


The McPherson mens team has a good season underway. They earned a 69-56 victory over the Ottawa men. They are now 8-2 overall and 2-0 in the KCAC.


I had done some research into changes that I could attempt to make my images better. The change in process that made these images come out as well as they did was a change to my post-processing workflow. The originals were underexposed as mentioned above. The raw files were processed through a software package called DXO to raise the exposure and remove the noise. DXO has recently come out with a new version (6.0) that I used for the first time.

Update 12/14: the images you see on this post now have been further processed.  I started with the DXO processed images I originally posted.  One or two of the originals were re-processed using DXO 6.1 to raise the exposure a little more.  Then all were cropped, black- and white-point adjusted, and sharpened in Capture NX2