Making your basketball action photos shine using Lightroom

On Monday I wrote about how to take great basketball action photos in gyms where you are cursed with low light, fast moving subjects, and where flash is sometimes not allowed (I never use flash when shooting basketball).  Here are the main things to remember when shooting basktball indoors:

1. Set your ISO as high as you can and still get a clean picture.  I set my 1D Mark III to 1600 or 3200.  Remember that you can always clean up some noise using Noise Ninja, or whatever program you prefer.
2. Set your auto focus to AI Servo
3. Set your mode to shutter priority (tv) and select as fast a shutter speed as you can while maintaining proper exposure (1/250 sec is my norm.)
4. Position yourself as close as you can behind the basket on the offense side of the floor (depending on which team you are focusing your shots on).
5. Ideally you need a fast f/2.8 lens.
6. Basketball action shots are best when you can see the players face or number, the basketball and/or the basket, and fans in the background.

After you have done all that you should get some pretty good shots.  In fact, you may think they're great shots, but bringing them into Lightroom is where you can really make them shine.  Here is one of my favorite Lightroom workflows for basketball:

Step One

Follow the (6) tips outlined above and you should get some pretty decent shots straight out of the camera... like this one.  But like I said... you'll want to take it into Lightroom to make it really shine.  If you're like me a lot of shots won't turn out this good even if you follow the steps outlined above.

Step Two

In Lightroom go to Basic in the Develop module and adjust the exposure as needed.  If you calibrate your monitor you should be able to trust your monitor.  If not, keep a close eye on the histogram, making sure you don't start to blow highlights or lose detail in the shadows.  Typically I would crop and straighten a photo as needed.  This layup shot is fine right out of the camera with no cropping as far as I'm concerned.

Step Three

I like to adjust the Tone Curve (usually changing the Point Curve to Medium Contrast.  Another option is to select the General Punch Lightroom Preset.  This step will remove the fuzziness that is inherent with digital photos no matter how good a photo you take.

Step Four

Most of the time I like to add a quick, subtle vignette to my photos using Post-Crop... or another option I like is to paint around my subject using the Adjustment Brush (K) and then lower the exposure a little.  This can really pop a subject off the page.  You can move the slider to increase or decrease the exposure to your own liking.  Very Cool!

That brings this week to a close.  I'm catching a plane to Nashville tomorrow to attend the ImagingUSA photography conference.  This will be my first time to attend.  It will be interesting to see how it compares to the NAPP Photoshop World Conference which I have attended in Vegas a couple of times (and plan to attend every year... it's that good!).  I'll let you know how things go.  I am there until next Wednesday so hopefully I can get in a blog or two while I'm there.

Keep shooting!

Ryan