Court of Dreams

One of the advantages of going to a private school is connections. Each year, because of one of the parents who seems to know everyone in Charlotte and the surrounding areas, my son’s school gets to play a game inside of Time Warner Cable Arena, formerly known as Bobcat Arena. Home of the Charlotte Bobcats. Yesterday was that day.

Earlier in the day, there had been the professional game between the Bobcats and the San Antonio Spurs, which the Spurs won. Well after the crowds had gone, we had an opportunity to take the court and play the Hunter Huss Huskies from Gastonia, NC.

I’ve been inside of TWCA a few times, but have never made to the inside on the first floor … the ’100′ section and beyond. Usually, I’m sitting way up in the cheap seats … I mean way up in the corner where the heat gathers! However, as this was high school basketball, we had full access. We all sat in either first, or second row seats, behind where the players usually sit, or even on the court side seats. I have no idea how much these seats go for.

I wanted more. I wanted to go down to the photographer’s gallery and I did! I made myself right at home on the end of the court, grabbed one of the foam kneelers/seats, and commenced to taking pictures! What a view. There were still a couple of working photographers there. The one next to me was shooting with two cameras, both Canon. He what looked like a 400mm f/4 on one, and 50mm on the other. He would switch cameras depending upon which end of the floor the players were on. Nice!

I had my trusty D300 and decided to give the 18-270 a try. It performed well, though I much prefer a non-zoom lens for sports. The lens creep was getting annoying and I had to keep my hand on the barrel to stop it from doing its little ‘creepy’ dance! I changed a few more auto focus settings and got even better results than I had been getting before! I went to 51 point auto focus with short lock-on tracking + 3D tracking. In this mode, the camera seems to keep the AF locked on the moving target much better.

Somewhere near the half, a gentleman sitting near to where I was shooting gave me his business card and asked me if I was shooting for one of the local newspapers. He turned out to be the head of the group sales division for the Bobcats and he wanted to know if I could provide him with some of the good shots that I got for them to use in their promotional material! He could hear how fast the shutter was moving and thought that I’d get much better shots than his assistant, who had a small point-and-shoot. I call that sound, ‘chopping lettuce’! I told him that I’d contact him today!

Unfortunately, we didn’t win the game. We were ahead with about 2 minutes remaining, but then it just fell apart. We ended up loosing by 6 points, or so. Tony was naturally disappointed. Next year, they will play here again and hopefully the story will be different. Also, I’m hoping that Tony can reach his dream and this will have been the first of many games that he got to play on an NBA court!

No related posts.