I headed over to the city of Westminster, CO on Monday night (about 5 minutes away from my condo) and to Westminster High School for a girls varsity basketball game between the home Westminster Lady Wolves and the visiting Panthers from Pomona High School.

I arrived at the gym about an hour before the game started so I could set up my two Alien Bee AB800 strobes for the game.  Upon entering the gym I knew right away I was going to have to bounce my strobes.  I was not exactly thrilled about the idea of bouncing them, but there was a scoreboard hanging right in the location that I wanted to place my strobe for the ideal direct fire location, but this would not work.  So, I had to bounce them off the ceiling.

The drawback with bouncing the strobes is that your light is not as strong.  You get nice lighting, no harsh shadows, but I had to shoot at ISO 640, where if I could direct strobe I could have shot with an ISO as low as 200.

But, I rolled with it.  I got my strobes placed, took some test light readings, adjusted them a bit, took some test shots, adjusted them a bit more, and was ready at tip off to shoot.  Pomona started out strong, but Westminster was not totally out of the game.  While they did let the Panthers get a decent lead on them, they did not let the game get out of control.

But then things started going wrong.  I was shooting with two cameras.  A Canon 1D Mk II with a 70-200 2.8 lens and a 7D with a 24-70 2.8 on it.  I had the 7D over my shoulder and in switching from one camera to another, my settings were changed and I started shooting with a 1/100th shutter speed.  This was way too slow.  It was letting too much ambient light in, and allowing for a lot of motion blur.  So, a lot of my shots of great lay ups, blocks, and steals were throw aways because I forgot to tape my camera buttons to prevent just this from happening.  It was a Monday…

When the second half started, Westminster did not fall too much further back and actually looked a bit better than they did in the first half.  They were trying to chip away at the Pomona lead, but every time they made a move, Pomona had an answer for them and kept them at a comfortable distance away from them on the scoreboard.

When the 4th quarter started, the home Wolves started playing with a much harder intensity and looked like they might start closing the gap.  They were forcing turn overs, and getting shots, but, they just could not get past the Pomona team.

If the Wolves would have played all four quarters with the intensity they showed in the 4th quarter, they might have been able to win this game.  They also need to work a lot on their half court offense and court awareness. But it is still early in the season, so they may be able to turn it around and show some promise on the court in their upcoming games.

To view and purchase photos from this game, please go to your team pages at MaxPreps.  Pomona Girls Basketball and Westminster Lady Wolves have stats, schedule, records, and photos.  Check it out now.