The following are posts related to specific shoots. And other things that I cannot stop myself from writing about.
The DePaul Prep Rams capped off a historic season Chicago Catholic League Championship regular season last night (Feb. 21, 2019) with an oversized 70-25 win over Mather. The Rams finish the regular season 20-9 overall and 12-3 in the Catholic League.
Seniors Perry Cowen, Raheem Anthony, Pavle Pantovic and Jack O’Brien played their last game in the Tom Winiecki Gym and it was a fun one. Thank you gentlemen for your Ram pride and dedication to your team and your school.
See you in Peoria!
The St. Viator Lions traveled to Benet Academy Wednesday evening (Feb. 20, 2019) for an East Suburban Catholic Conference game with the conference title on the line. If the Lions won, they would be conference champs.
The game started slow with a lot of missed shots. But late first quarter threes from St. Viator’s Trey Calvin gave the Lions a 12-11 lead at the end of the first quarter.
However, despite Benet’s senior forward Kendrick Tchoua sitting out most of the second quarter with two fouls, the Lions had no answer for Benet’s junior center Colin Crothers. Crothers got the ball in the paint and scored to give Benet a 27-21 half time lead.
Benet held its lead throughout the second half increasing it to as much as 12 late in the fourth quarter. With several minutes left, St. Viator starting sending the Redwings to the line. Surprisingly, Benet kept missing free through and the Lions cut the deficit to five inside a minute. Two free throws by Tchoua extended the lead to seven with several seconds to go and Benet held on to the victory.
The Benet victory means that despite losing to St. Viator last Friday night, Marian Catholic is the East Suburban Catholic Conference champions.
The St. Viator Lions finished the season at 23-6 overall and 7-2 in the ESCC. The Lions host a 3A Regional starting Monday, with their first game Tuesday evening against the winner of Noble/ITW Speer and Marine Leadership Academy. The Lions come in as the #1 seed in the Grayslake Central Sectional.
Benet Academy finished the season at 22-7 over all and 7-2 in the ESCC. The Redwings enter the Bartlett 4A Sectional as the #2 seed behind #1 seed Geneva and play the winner of Addison Trail and Glenbard East on Tuesday.
Welcome to playoff time and the beginning of the end of another high school basketball season.
Below are my photos from the DePaul Prep v. De La Salle game last night (Feb. 19, 2019) at DePaul Prep. By virtue of the 63-44 victory over the Meteors, the Rams’ stand alone atop the Chicago Catholic League’s Blue Division. For the first time since 2000, the Catholic League basketball championship resides at Addison and California.
It was an emotional night for the Rams and their supporters, including this one, after a disappointing loss at St. Rita on Sunday. The Rams improve their overall record to 19-9 and 12-3 in the Chicago Catholic League. One more regular season game remains for the Rams. On Thursday night (Feb. 21, 2019), Mather High School comes to the Tom Winiecki Gym for a 6:00 p.m., senior night finale.
I would like to offer a special word of thanks to Tom Kleinschmidt and Ken Gryzwa for their offer to let me cut down a piece of the net and for giving me a piece after I had to refuse. It has been my honor and privilege to photograph the Gordon Tech/DePaul Prep games for several years now. I have gradually gotten better as a photographer as a result. I could never have done it without so many gracious subjects. I am overjoyed to see the Rams enjoying so much success. I am equally pleased to see that DePaul Prep remains a great school with a rich tradition of and vibrant future for Catholic education in Chicago.
Congratulations and continued success to my friends at DePaul Prep. In the immortal words of Paul Chabura, “And as always, Go Rams!”
DePaul Prep Rams clinch a Chicago Catholic League Blue title with victory over Wolfpack.
In very well played and high scoring game, the Benet Redwings came back from a late deficit against to the Simeon Wolverines and captured the 4A Benet Regional title, 71-66, on Thursday, (February 14, 2019).
On occasion I write, mostly in jest, that the light in the gym is the most important part of high school basketball. Well tonight I was down in the 19th Ward at Brother Rice. Please understand that I write this only from a place of Christian charity and as a loyal Chicago Catholic Leaguer, the light in the Brother Rice gym is . . . well . . . horrible.
There, I wrote it. Brother Rice has the nicest high school football stadium outside of Texas but very disappointing light in the gym. Such light as there is in the gym, which is not much, is yellow. All you Crusader fans and especially members of the Congregation of Christian Brothers, please do not hate me. It’s not personal; it’s photography.
I write this only to try and explain what I had to do to get some usable photos. I am still struggling to be a passable photographer. Much of what I have done this year is experimentation on the use of ISO. My current theory is not to go above 3200 ISO and try to bring back the exposure in Lightroom. This goes against my instinct to get the exposure right in the camera. When I shoot ISO above 3200, I find that my photos were noticeably grainy. (For example, look at my photos from the Orr v. Lane game, especially the photo that ended up in the Sun-Times.)
Today’s photos are competent enough but not good. The autofocus was dancing around on me. None of the photos are sharp. I have either reached the limit of my cameras’ capabilities or I don’t know how to make the most of the cameras—probably a little of both. I have got to get better at this.
As for the game, I think I will dial back that sort of commentary for a while. I talked to a friend this week who is a actual sportswriter. He said he enjoyed the blog but I found myself apologizing and explaining that I don’t pretend to be a sportswriter. That being said, the game was marred by fouls. I thought the referees did a terrible job on calls against both teams. Marquise Kennedy is very impressive. His foul shooting won the game. He can carry his team and did this afternoon.
Hope you like the photos.
Early in this basketball season I wrote about the high school basketball season coming in phases: Thankgiving tournament, CCL crossover games, Christmas tournament, assorted shootouts. Now we are upon the second to last phase, the Chicago Catholic League Blue final games and await the IHSA playoffs.
I have told anyone foolhardy enough to listen that winning the Catholic League was what I wanted to see the DePaul Prep Rams do. Getting to Peoria would be nice but winning the 100 plus year old Chicago Catholic League is an accomplishment that means something, at least to me.
Well here we are. 8-1 in the Catholic League Blue with a one game lead on St. Laurence. Win out, and the DePaul Prep Rams and their coach, Tom Kleinschmidt will have won the Chicago Catholic League—the Catholic League Blue. But that is a subject for another day. Winning out means beating De La Salle, Fenwick (at Fenwick), Brother Rice (at Brother Rice), Loyola , St. Ignatius and then a chance to cap it off with a win against CCL White leader St. Rita.
There it is. Six CCL games in twelve days. All against historic rivals and good teams. If you do that, you’ve done something.
Even with this formidable task ahead and despite my frequent refrain against looking ahead, last night’s sixth Superbowl victory by Tom Brady and Bill Belicheck has me thinking. I could not stop myself from looking at the 3A IHSA playoffs and playing out the Sectional matchups.
Unlike most years, DePaul is not hosting either a regional or sectional. The IHSA 3A sectional assignments are out and DePaul has landed in the Grayslake Sectional. There are nineteen teams assigned to that sectional, including the formerly highly ranked and still extremely talented St. Viator Lions.
There are four regionals hosted by St. Patrick, Ridgewood, St. Viator and Carmel. It’s my understanding that teams are supposed to be assigned to geographically close regionals and not purely by seeded by the best teams. In practice, I am not sure how that all works. So I improvised. Basically, I just guessed. Looking at geography and over all records, this is what I came up with:
St. Patrick Regional: St. Patrick , Steinmetz, DePaul Prep, Noble/ITW Speer, Marine Leadership Academy.
Ridgewood Regional: Ridgewood, Sullivan, Noble/Pritzker, CICS/Northtown, Alcott.
St. Viator Regional: St. Viator, Northside, Elmwood Park, Amundsen and Intrinsic Charter.
Carmel Regional: Carmel, Antioch, North Grand and Grayslake Central
It’s not going to be exactly this but I would think not too far off. So we are probably looking at the regional champions being, DePaul Prep, Ridgewood (maybe Sullivan), St. Viator and Carmel with St. Viator squaring off against DePaul Prep in the Sectional final. Even with a Trey Calvin being out with a broken hand, St. Viator with Jeremiah Hernandez is very, very good. This is probably the best St. Viator basketball team in the school’s fifty-eight year history. I have been around that school since I started there are a freshman in 1977. This year’s team is the best I can remember and I am old, really old.
DePaul Prep and St. Viator in a sectional final shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. The Rams and Lions have been the only two ranked teams in the Grayslake Sectional. Each team has scheduled top competition and dominated their conferences.
As for the Super-sectional, the IHSA website hasn’t released which Super-sectionals will play each others. But if last year is a guide, the two northern most Super-sectionals played each other, Sears Center and NIU. If that holds true this year, the DePaul Prep Rams would not face the leading 3A powerhouses, Morgan Park and Bogan until Peoria.
So, there you have it. Win six Catholic Blue games and beat St. Viator. All for the chance to face Morgan Park, Bogan and or Springfield Southeast. This makes that stretch of games in the shootouts look like a walk in the park. Let’s get to work.
DePaul Prep’s Raheem Anthony with an over the head pass to Perry Cowen for the easy layup against Morgan Park.
Senior night photos are always fun. DePaul Prep varsity girls did not disappoint.
The Lady Rams defeated the Catalyst Maria Lady Wolves in a very entertaining game. The Lady Wolves came into the Tom Winiecki Gym with something to prove. They played hard, and a lot. They only had seven players. They were great three point shooters which kept them in the game. This observer came away impressed with the effort and the skills.
The DePaul Prep Lady Rams took care of business on Senior Night with parents, friends and classmates in attendance. The IHSA playoffs start on Monday with a 2A Regional at DePaul Prep. The Lady Rams have the No. 3 seed in the Timothy Christian Sectional and open the playoffs on Tuesday at home against the winner of Disney v. ASPIRA.
Lady Rams 60, Lady Wolves 53.
I made the trip out to the Quincy Shootout. I wish I could say I did it simply because of my love of basketball but it worked out where I could drop off my wife at her parents and then I went on to Quincy. Everyone was happy.
My first visit to Quincy. Lots of basketball history. Fancy Hall of Fame room. They put on a nice event at Quincy Senior High School with first rate facilities, good food and very clean light in the gym!
I shot two games. Marian Catholic v. Rock Ridge from Columbia, Missouri. Marian slowly and methodically dismantled Rock Ridge. Every time I see Marian they impress me more and more. They are just calm and steady. No weaknesses. Ahron Uliss had 23 points. The Spartans have one of the toughest roads to Peoria as they could get. They will have to get past Brother Rice, Simeon, St. Rita and Bloom in the 4A Eisenhower Sectional and then either Curie or Whitney Young in the Northwestern Super-Sectional. Ouch!
The DePaul v. Quincy game was a whole other animal. Rams shot poorly in the first quarter. In the second quarter, they settled down, went on a run and took a 29-24 lead into the locker room.
I don’t want to say there was poor officiating. I am no judge of officials but they called 24 fouls on DePaul and 12 fouls on Quincy. I have seen a great many DePaul Prep/Gordon Tech games since Tom Klienschmidt took over. I don’t remember seeing any player foul out. Seriously. I mean like never.
Three starters fouled out tonight at Quincy.
Nevertheless, I have to hand it to Quincy. The Rams had chances and did not take advantage. The Blue Devils made all their free throws at the end of regulation, all except the one which opened the door for Perry Cowen to tie the game at the end sending the game to overtime. As I wrote above, I don’t like to blame a loss on bad officiating so I won’t. But this I learned: beware of the officials when visiting a downstate home team in a big game.
The game got a little chippy at the end. The teams exchanged some choice words as they walked out of the gym. I could not hear what was said so I hesitate to assign blame. I will see what I can find out and report.
As for the photos, there is very nice light in the Quincy gym. After a little testing before the first game, I decided to shoot both cameras at 3200 ISO and 1/800. My plan was to bring back the exposure in Lightroom.
You be the judge.
The Lane Tech Indians (13-7, 4-4) traveled to #5 Whitney Young Dolphins (17-6, 6-1) Wednesday evening (Jan. 23, 2019) for the final CPS Red-West North conference game. Despite the Whitney Young looking every bit the part of their #5 ranking, Lane Tech hung around all evening on the strength of an impressive press break and excellent three point shooting. The Indians got within six points late in the fourth quarter but the late charge failed with the Indians falling 78-69.
The Whitney Young gym presents some challenges to photographing games. First, there is very little room between the baseline and the wall. I couldn’t risk sitting down because I would not get out of the way if a player come flying off the court. Second is the matter of the cheerleaders. Two rows of cheerleaders on either side of the lane—maybe 20 or 24. Not enough room for cheerleaders and photographers.
On the bright side, Whitney Young improved the lights since last year. They installed some new fluorescent lights which are a vast improvement.
I hope you like the photos.
Last night (Jan. 18, 2019), the Lane Tech Indians fell to the Orr Spartans 72-53 at Lane. Lane played their hearts out but Orr was just too good.
I wish I could write more about the game. But last night, more than usual, I wasn’t paying much attention to the game. I was concentrating on the getting good shots, on being in the right position to get good shots and on anticipating the action.
As it turns out, I did okay. Not my best work, but respectable work on short notice without an opportunity to prepare. A good day. The day of my first photo credit in the Chicago Sun-Times.
I hope you like the photos.
So part of why I am doing this blog is to chronicle my growth as a photographer. I am not so sure that it is such a good idea to do it so publicly but I don’t have much to lose so what why not. To that end, I thought I would compare a photograph I took to a photograph taken by another photographer of the same subject. The two photographs are below.
The photos were taken at the Evanston Township High School Gym on January 11, 2019, at almost exactly the same time from different angles. This provides an opportunity I have not previously had to compare one of my photographs against one taken by another photographer of the same subject at the same time.
My photograph is the one on the right. It was taken from underneath the west basket slightly north of the rim. The photograph on the left was taken by Nic Summers of Sports Star Photos (sports-star-photos.com). I didn’t have a chance to speak to Nic that night and I have never meet him. I briefly looked at his camera. It appeared to be a Sony mirrorless. I did not see which model. Frankly, all those Sony’s look the same. I can’t be sure which lens but it was the color of the G Series Sony lenses. I obviously don’t know any setting information.
So how are they different? Color for one. Color temperature or white balance is so much to taste I don’t know what to say. I don’t like yellow light so I try to correct for it as much as I can even if the color of the light in the gym is yellow.
The principal difference I can see is the graininess of my photo. I took the photo with an original verson Canon 7D. I bought this used 7D about five years. It was originally released in 2009. It uses an APC sensor. It has many of the features of the advanced full frame Canon line up, just not a full frame sensor. I have gotten good results with it over the years but its image quality is far surpassed by my 5D Mark IV.
The ISO was set at 4000—hence the graininess. I don’t get that level of graininess with my 5D at 4000 ISO. So I presume this is the limitation of the smaller megapixel smaller sensor. A modern full frame Sony sensor is vastly superior to the old 7D without a small sensor.
Both photos are good mostly because of the Jalien Gibson and the New Trier player whose name escapes me. It was an exciting play that we both captured. Nic Summers got more out of his camera that I did.
I have to find a way to overcome the graininess issues with my photographs. I plan to save money to purchase Canon’s mirrorless replacement for the 1Dx Mark II whenever that comes out. Canon must surely be planning such a camera. It is going to be pricey!
UPDATE: Nic Summers informed me that he used a Sony A9, 8000 ISO, 1/800 shutter speed at f3.2.
Wow, this really shows the advance during the last ten years of photographic technology. The performance of the A9 at 8000 ISO is remarkable. The exposure is pretty close to perfect. Only slightly grainy. I can see why the A9 is said to be the best sports camera there is.
My Canon 5D Mark IV has much better ISO performance than my 7D but I wasn’t shooting it at 8000 ISO at the Evanston game, mostly because I didn’t need to.
I am going back to ETHS on Saturday for the War on the Shore so I will be able to do some more testing. This exercise has been very interesting and productive—for me at least.
One more thing. A comment points out that Nic Summers photo shows the basket. I didn’t write at all about composition but I think she makes a good point. Nic’s Photo has that advantage. I usually try to show some of the rim and/or net if possible. I don’t remember why I didn’t in my photo.
Coach Nick Irvin and his #5 ranked Morgan Park Mustangs came to the DePaul Prep this evening (Jan. 12, 2019) for a shootout with the #12 ranked DePaul Prep Rams. In a high energy game, the Mustangs held off the Rams throughout the whole game despite good shooting by the Rams. Although the Rams drew within 3 points late in the fourth quarter, Morgan Park prevailed in the potential state championship preview by the score of 62-56.
More on the game and the rest of the inaugural Steve Pappas Shootout later. Let get right to the photos.
The second Evanston v. New Trier matchup of the last night (Jan. 11, 2019) at Evanston was even better than the first as the Trevian girls topped the Wildkits 46-45. With time running out, New Trier point guard Tinah Hong drove the baseline drawing a foul. Just a cool as can be, with the game on the line, she stepped up to the line and drained the tying bucket—nothing but net. Then, after an Evanston time out, Tinah again stepped up to the line and drained the game winner—nothing but net. Evanston had a few seconds but couldn’t get up a shot to win.
I got some good shots of this game. Some of the photos are a little too grainy but they are pretty well lit. I hope you like them.
Great game. Wildkits held off a late charge by the Trevians and came away with a convincing 54-46 victory. My third time seeing Evanston this year. Each time they have come out victorious in tight games over quality opponents—St. Viator, Uplift and now New Trier. I love the Evanston gym. It has such a stadium quality—and video scoreboards. My favorite gym in the area, well at least today.
As for the photos, it was not my finest work. I got to the game a little late so I was a little rushed. I hope you like the photos.
The #12 DePaul Prep Rams (12-3, 6-0) defeated the St. Francis de Sales Pioneers (1-17, 0-7) 87-34 this evening (Jan. 8, 2019) at DePaul’s Tom Winiecki Gym. I haven’t seen a win by so much in my memory. I don’t really know what to write about the game. Had my team been on the receiving end of a 50 point defeat I would not be happy about it. But it didn’t seem to me that the Rams were trying to rub it in. It seemed like they just really wanted to play and were not thinking much about the score. The starters didn’t want to come out of the game. They just wanted to play.
The Rams will have their chance on Saturday when Nick Irvin’s Morgan Park Mustangs enter the Tom Winiecki Gym for the marque game of the Steve Pappas Shootout. Should be a big crowd and a chance for the Rams to prove themselves against top competition.
As for the photos, I used the auto ISO seething for a game just to see how it would work. The ISO just as high as 12,800. Those photos came out very grainy. I set it at 6400 in the last game and it was still pretty grainy even on a phone screen. So I dropped the ISO to 4000 to see how that would look. I had of boost the exposure on all the shots but they were not grainy. The highlights might blown out a little but not too grainy. I guess one must just pick one’s poison.
Hope you like the photos.
