Practice, practice, practice

Richard Lautens, Staff Photographer

I like shooting sports, of course I like to shoot just about anything.  Sports has a certain excitement to it however.  Physically it can be tiring due to the concentration and wielding the big honkin’ lenses but I definitely feed off of the energy.

Sometimes my varying schedule seems to just miss the games however.  This past week in one shift I was assigned and then unassigned to cover the Raptors 3 times!  I ended up babysitting a story at City Hall instead that didn’t even make the paper.

This week however I covered a Raptors practice and the game the next day.  NBA rules only allow photographers to go into their practices after they are over (it sounds like federal Conservative policy to me).  The doors opens, we pile in hoping that there are a few players throwing a few hoops-often it is quite quiet and a good picture can be quite rare.

 I lucked out this time when a couple of players started hoofing around a ball like they were playing soccer.  I was thrilled to be able to make a more interesting looking picture than yet another tight shot of Bosh making free throws.

The pictures didn’t run because immediately after practice they showed off their Huskies heritage uniforms-obviously more newsworthy.  Perhaps next time.

 
Hedu Turkoglu makes a header while playing soccer at practice

Marco Belinelli plays a little soccer at the end of practice

Hedu Turkoglu looks over at his bobble head while talking to media

Finally, here are a couple of pics from the game complete with the new/old uniform.

 Chris Bosh in the full on 'hero pose' with the Huskies uniform

Minnesota Timberwolves guard Wayne Ellington looks like he his playing keep away from Toronto Raptors guard Marco Belinelli and Toronto Raptors guard Marcus Banks.

The Raptors Amir Johnson get a facefull of ball courtesy of Nathan Jawai.

Richard Lautens/Toronto Star

Comments

[Stan Schurman]

Great shots Richard. Tell me. Do you shoot wide open and at what shutter speed?

[Mediocre Forever]

Those are some cool pics. The last pic with Amir Johnson though, is Al Jefferson not Nathan Jawai.

[Jhon S]

good pictures but i am surprised there was no picture of any victims during war during the 2000 to 2009!
there were many moments where one has shot pic of struggle of war victims in Sri Lanka, Afhgan and many ohter countries which needed to posted as a remembrance of this decade!

[me]

Nice pics, the one of the " Russian Policeman" is labeled incorrectly though. He is a Spetzna (commando) as it says on his shirt.

[Richard Lautens]

I do shoot all sports wide open (f2.8). I find that it really cleans up the background and makes the athletes really pop. We are also often battling low light and you really need at least 1/500 of a second to stop the action so there is not a lot of room for depth of field.
Richard Lautens
staff photographer
Toronto Star