Getting up off the baseline...

It's no real secret I'm not a huge fan of shooting basketball, especially during the regular season. Part of it is because the local Abilene teams tend to be awful. The other part is all basketball photos tend to look the same, especially when I'm shooting as many as eight games a week (a high school boys and girls game on Tuesdays and Fridays and college men's and women's games on Thursdays and Saturdays). By the time the playoffs come around things get better there is at least an emotional factor going on, plus after the first week all the really bad teams are weeded out and I finally get to see some good ball being played.

One of my favorite ways to combat the baseline bore of getting much the same shot every game is to get away from the sitting on the baseline and shooting from in the stands. While the baseline may seem like a cool place to shoot a game from, sitting there for two straight games not only is hell on your back, but you are at pretty much the same angle the whole time too. By getting up into the stands you are helping yourself out a lot by getting a better angle and shooting down on the players and since they are going up at the basket it's easier to get clean shots of their faces rather than armpits. Now, I don't shoot every game from the stands, I try to vary it up between the baseline and the stands and often the crowd sizes dictates where I sit too. Obviously if it's a full house I don't have a choice and have to sit on the baseline. These three photos were taken from a couple of games over the last week and they are better than anything I've gotten from the baseline this year.