Amateur photographer having fun with photos
After serving in the fire services for more than four decades, Pullman Fire Chief Mike Heston retired on Feb. 14, 2025. He was the assistant chief when I joined Pullman Fire in 1999.
There are photos in the gallery from both his retirement party and his final shift.
A much-improved Rogers High School came to Pullman. They were fast. They were good. Hats off to their dramatic improvement. Pullman had some shining moments, but I found that more of the photos showed highlights from Rogers.
It’s been nearly four years since I shot a basketball game. I took my Canon 6D with my trusty 70-200 lens. I got a new f/1.2 30mm prime lens. I put that on the 70D. As I shot I noticed the 70D consistently produced images with more grain. My 6D is a newer body. I set both of them to around f/3.3 with a shutter speed of 1/800 and auto ISO. As I look through the photos I can tell which ones were from the 6D and which were from the 70D based on the grain.
Tonight’s game against West Valley high school was senior night. It also meant Pullman would win the leave championship with a victory. Throughout the game Pullman pretty much controlled everything. Shortly after the third quarter started West Valley made a bit of a run and made it close but it didn’t take Pullman long to start running away again.
Following the game I got a few shots of the players celebrating their league championship.
I am not expert at shooting basketball. It is challenging because it seems bright inside the gym unless you’re shooting photos. So I have to compromise on the f/stop and shutter speed to get the photo without too much noise.
On top of that I have no idea what I am doing when cropping the photos. Obviously, I am trying to tell a story. I re-cropped these photos a second time. In some cases I thought the facial expressions of the players were being missed due to all the extra information in the photo. I am happier with the second cropping. In some photos I left the full body to show the height of the jump or the other battle taking place. In other cases it is upper body to show the facial expressions.
I have a friend who loves black and white sports photos. I changed all the photos I chose for this collection into black and white photos. I chose several that I thought looked pretty cool and included them in this upload.
This evening Pullman High School took on Rogers High School from Spokane at Hobbs Field at Pullman High School. It was senior night and I wanted to make sure I got photos of all the seniors. I wrote down all their numbers and checked them off when I got several photos. This photo set is a little larger than most because of the extra photos of the seniors. I also was able to get a photo of all the seniors after the game when one of the coaches was taking photos.
The game itself was pretty well controlled by Pullman the whole way. At half time Pullman had a 14-0 lead. Then in the second half Pullman scored three more times to win 35-0. It was a sweet way for the seniors to finish at home.
I used the same set-up I have been using this season with one change. I went from a 50mm prime lens on the 70D to a 18-135 zoom lens. This allowed me to do even better when there is a play that happens incredibly close to my location. Prior to the game I was doing some test shots of the team practicing. I found my back-up SD card I was using was not up to snuff. Although it is a higher end card it was slow when saving when I took a bunch of photos. So I changed it back to the primary SD card and from there forward there were no issues with just holding down my shutter button.
The seniors, according to the Pullman High School roster are:
Hyatt Utzman #2
Carson Coulter #8
Ryan Bickelhaupt #10
Justin Tran #15
Maxwell Wolsborn #19
Jason Tran #23
Mason Emerson #24
Joel Moore #30
Jace Wright-Druffel #44
Zackary Farnsworth #45
Tanner Richartz #53
Gabriel Westensee #54
Kyle Volk #58
Kaleb Wilke #68
This evening I shot the Pullman High School football game against our Quad City neighbor, Clarkston High School. Clarkston got out to an early lead. They lead the whole game until the final minute of the game. Pullman had tied up the game at 34 to 34 with a chance for a PAT to go up by one. It failed but the opportunity for the game winning field goal was not missed and Pullman went on to win 37-34.
I shot with my normal setup — a 70D with a 50mm prime lens and a 6D Mark II with a 70-200mm lens. But with the crop factor of the 70D the lens acts like a 70mm. That is pretty much what I am already using. I used to put a 18-135mm zoom lens on the 70D but it is not fast glass and I miss some shots.
I have two things I am going to learn from tonight’s game. Number one is to periodically check my shutter speed. I accidentally dialed it down to 1/350 which is way too slow for football. I started the game at 1/1000. After I got home I found some blurring in a lot of photos because the shutter was too slow to stop the action.
Secondly, after tonight I realized having a camera set up that does exactly what my other camera does is pointless. Next time I will use the zoom lens even though it is slower glass.
