The Best on the Hardwood...

For our annual basketball players of the year we ended up getting a little bit of a late start and were scrambling to get players in on rather shorter notice than I'd have liked. That, coupled with a few of players needing to come from more than 100 miles away I was really nervous about whether they'd all be able to come in. Well, my fears were correct and for the first time all of the players weren't going to come in. My remedy for the situation was to shoot the photos really simple, with a dark background and some nice, simple light that could easily be copied. Since one of the players wouldn't be able to make it, but had a photographer friend of the family that was going to shoot a photo for us. Not ideal, but given the constraints, it was better than nothing.

For the players of the year, it was a little bit easier as far as the scheduling goes. Both players were within 20 miles of Abilene. I shot Kainon Irons, the boys player first, he was such a nice and humble kid it was kind of hard to get him amped up for the shoot. But, at the same time he was really great to work with and once he started to get into it, things went really well.

The girls player was Peyton Little, a junior from one of the local schools and the player of the year for the second year in a row. I didn't shoot her last year since I was on vacation when it was shot. So, I wasn't worried about having to shoot it different since my style is different than the photog who shot last year's photo. Like most girls, she was more concerned about how she looked in the photo than than the boys player. Once again the LCD screen of my camera helped me out a lot, after taking one look at the shot she was hooked and happy to do whatever it took to make sure the photo turned out really nice. Now, I just need to figure out how I'm going to shoot her photo next year.