Shooting streetball in the Netherlands, Part One

On July 20, 2013, I went to Rotterdam to take photos of the Erasmus bridge with a new lens I’d bought for my Nikon, a 15 mm Zeiss Distagon. I was not expecting to shoot basketball, or the street variation that was about to take the Netherlands by storm. I certainly did not expect that I would get hooked on shooting the sport and would be invited by the game’s organizers to shoot their games. All of this happened because I bumped into a 3x3 basketball tournament on my way to the bridge. After that, I looked forward to the summer tournaments every year. Streetball, also called “3x3”, is a very cool sport and I am pleased to have had the luck to bump into the first game and the opportunity to shoot all the rest.

This is my sixth year of shooting basketball for myself and, on occasion, the Nederlandse Basketball Bonde (NBB). It was exciting to watch as the sport went from the kind of pick-up games I had played in America as recently as 2006, to the first competition I watched in 2013, the increasingly strong quality of players on the court, and the decision to include it in the Olympics at the next Olympic games.

FIBA created 3X3 basketball as a way to encourage young people to play basketball. It was introduced in 2010 at the Singapore Youth Olympic Games. The first international leagues were formed in 2012, at the same time as the FIBA 3x3 World Cup and the FIBA 3x3 World Tour. This meant that the game in Rotterdam was one of the earliest games in the sport, and it provided the opportunity to chronicle the earliest years of the sport in the Netherlands. This article is about that journey, with the goal of conveying some of the excitement I felt as I chased players from the sidelines with my camera, watched those winning moments at the end of games, and the camaraderie that prevailed off court among all players, regardless of team or nationality.

In that first game from 2013, I got lucky. I asked a man there for permission to shoot from near the basket and he gave it. His name was Alpha Sow, and I later discovered he managed the Concrete Lions group of players from Rotterdam. I didn’t take many pictures, but I did get the winning dunk shot by player Christiaan Grives, aka “Batman” (figure 1). After the game, he ran up to me and asked something in Dutch. I didn’t understand him, but then he used English. It was still difficult to understand him because of the cheering and music all around us but I heard enough to know that he wanted to see the shot of his dunk. The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by the rest of the team, all checking out the shot.

Figure 1 Christiaan "Batman" Grives dunks for the win at the final game in Rotterdam, July 20, 2013

As I left the game in Rotterdam, Alpha came up to tell me there was another game in Den Haag the following week. At home, I kept thinking of the sense of excitement at the game and decided to buy another new lens. Instead of the extremely wide angle 15 mm lens I had in Rotterdam, I’d use a more “normal” 35 mm to get a bit closer to the action. My wife, Kitty, was curious about the game, so she went with me. On the way, we got thoroughly soaked by heavy rain. In Den Haag, the game was off until the rain stopped. Meanwhile, the players sat or stood in sheltered areas near the court, chatting amiably. I took the opportunity to go to a nearby H&M department store and bought some dry clothes: a pair of brilliant yellow trousers and a salmon coloured Donald Duck t-shirt. Kitty was horrified, but they were cheap, so I was happy.

              The games were loads of fun, but the shot that sticks out to me as the real winner of the day was a dunk shot by Alberto Gomez during the dunk contest (figure 2). I later learned that “Gomez” was well-known to the local 3x3 community as a real flyer when it came to the dunk contests. The height he achieved in his leaps was so natural and elegant that they may as well have been works of art in themselves.

Figure 2 Alberto Gomez, with the winning dunk from the 2013 dunk contest in Den Haag

The shot of Gomez led to a request from Gerge Emmen, one of the game’s organizers, to use the image on their Facebook page. About a year later, he also offered a modest fee and travel costs to shoot their games in Amsterdam. That sounded both cool and respectable, so I agreed immediately. By then, I had another lens to play with, a 50 mm Zeiss Otus, which would allow me to get even closer to the action, and with the highest quality possible for a DSLR lens. Like most of my other lenses however, it is manual focus only. I had contemplated getting another autofocus lens, like the 35 mm I used the previous year in Den Haag but opted for higher image quality from the Zeiss. Besides, I had found that players move so fast that AF has a hard time tracking them. Instead, I preferred to focus on a spot on the ground that I knew players would eventually cross, imagine an arc radiating from my camera to that point, then shoot whenever a player was about to cross that boundary. I didn’t shoot as many images as I would have with AF, but I got some good shots, and that is what mattered the most.

In Amsterdam, I snapped my first shots of players Dyon Doekhi (figure 3), Chip Jones (figure 4), and Jesper Jobse (figure 5). At the time I didn’t know who they were, but over the dozens of games that followed, I got to know them all as top players on the 3X3 circuit. In addition, I got my first taste of international competition. At the finals, they had men’s and women’s teams from many countries, including Russia, Poland, Greece, Romania, and Azerbaijan.

Figure 3 My first photo of Dyon Doekhi, playing for Team Amsterdam against Romania at the 2014 finals in Amsterdam

Figure 4 Retired Dutch pro basketball player Chip Jones playing for Amsterdam against Azerbaijan in 2014

Figure 5 My first photo of Jesper Jobse, now the top ranked 3x3 player in the Netherlands (ranked #37 internationally). Amsterdam, 2014

For the 2015 season, I made a serious upgrade to my equipment. I had been using a Nikon D800 and a Sony A7r. Both are good full frame DSLRs, and all the lenses I used with them were top of the line, but I wanted to switch to medium format. Medium format images have significantly higher resolution than their DSLR counterparts, better lenses, greater sharpness, richer colour, and higher dynamic range. It is unusual to shoot sports with medium format cameras because they are not known for their speed. Their top shutter speed is comparable to a DSLR, but they cannot store images as quickly because the file sizes are much larger. A D800 stores about 8 images per second, but the Phase One IQ-250 I bought could only store one. This meant that I could no longer shoot bursts of frames as a player approached the basket. I’d get one chance, and if I missed, there wouldn’t be a second chance. More care would be needed, but every good shot would be better than its DSLR counterpart. 

The differences between a DSLR and a medium format image are not easily detected at web resolution because resolution is one of the signature characteristics of medium format photography. It allows very large prints to be made with no loss of sharpness. Improved colour can be seen at web resolution, but it is affected by the translation to the sRGB colour profile used on the web and JPEG compression. This didn’t matter to me because I had decided to chronicle these games at the highest possible quality, with the goal of having an exhibition at some point or publishing them in a book.

I shot in only three cities in 2015 because I spent part of the season in Thailand on a fashion shoot. The cities were Breda, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. In Breda and Rotterdam (figures 6-8), I used flash for the first time in a basketball game, with permission from the organizers. It wasn’t a tiny little camera-mounted flash, but a fairly large ProFoto B1 500 w/s model mounted on a light stand at the end of the court. It was risky to set it up and then walk away to shoot, but I trusted the highly trained athletes on the court to avoid the light.

Figure 6 Medium format flash photography in Breda 2015

Figure 7 The dunk contest, Rotterdam 2015

Figure 8 Shot without a flash, Netherlands vs Germany in Amsterdam, 2015

In 2016, I shot games in Amsterdam, Breda, Tilburg, Utrecht, Amsterdam Bijlmer, and in Rotterdam. This was the year I first used flash in Amsterdam, but after a year of using it successfully unattended, a player finally knocked over my light. Luckily it wasn’t broken. At 2,000 euros a unit, I wasn’t eager to replace it. After this game, I brought an assistant with me to hold the light. If necessary, he could avoid any collisions by keeping an eye on the ball, players, and the audience. 2016 was also the year I first encountered World champion Serbian team Novi Sad and their collection of top-ranked players (figure 9). In the years since, they have won every game. Their reputation is indeed well-earned.

Figure 9 Dejan Majstorovic of Serbian team Novi Sad, wearing number 4. Behind him, also in blue, Dusan Bulut. Dutch player Matthew van Tongeren in orange, wearing number 7. Amsterdam, 2016.

In Amsterdam, I finally identified German player Ray Williams (figure 10), one of the fastest and most dynamic players I’d seen to date. In later years, I found it was almost impossible to take a boring shot of Williams. He was always moving at top speed, jumping, or acrobatically passing the ball to someone.

Figure 10 German player Ray Williams with the ball, guarded by Dutch players Jesper Jobse and Sjoerd van Vlisteren in Amsterdam, 2016

Figure 11 Another shot of Ray Williams, with Christiaan Grives wearing number 9, in Breda, 2016

One of the things I liked about 3X3 is that it is normally played outdoors. In rain, the players go to nearby indoor venues. This doesn’t happen often, but in 2016, three games in a row were played inside: Breda, Tilburg, and Utrecht. At first, I was unhappy to be shooting in dim lighting, sometimes with nearly black walls, but these locations also provided opportunities for more dramatic lighting. The indoor locations were small though, so I had to be more careful than usual to avoid being stepped on by players (figure 12).

Figure 12 The Sportbox, Utrecht, 2016

In Den Haag, the “Challenger” was held. This series of games was held on the Scheveningen Strand as part of the Olympics exposition held there. The Challenger attracted top teams from around the world for a 20,000 euro prize. The quality of play was excellent, but the stands were considerably less full than I would have liked. 3x3 basketball is a dynamic sport, but it wasn’t yet well known enough to bring in the size of audience it would command just a year later (Figures 13-15).

Figure 13 Den Haag Challenger, 2016

Figure 14 Ray Williams at the Den Haag Challenger, 2016

Figure 15 A successful block at the Den Haag Challenger

For the finals in Amsterdam, I borrowed a new camera, a Phase One XF with an IQ3-100 digital back. The digital back on this camera shot 101-megapixel (MP) images. Converted to TIFF files for printing, the images were 568 MB. These print out at two meters wide without any loss of detail. It was a FIBA game, so I wasn’t allowed to use a flash. Regardless, I got some decent shots and had my reason to upgrade again. From here on, I shot most games with the XF camera and a 101 MP digital back.

Figure 15 Amsterdam vs Serbia at Bijlmer station Amsterdam, 2016. Joey Schelvis in blue, Marko Zdero, of Serbia, in white

Figure 16 Jesper Jobse at Bijlmer station, Amsterdam 2016

Figure 17 Sjoerd van Vlisteren of team Amsterdam makes a basket against Germany, Amsterdam 2016

Figure 18 Marko Savic of Serbia after making a basket. Bijlmer station, Amsterdam 2016

In 2017, I shot games in Amsterdam (figures 19-21), Breda (figure 22-23), Den Haag (figures 24-26), and Utrecht (Figures 27-29). I also did several separate portrait photo shoots of players in studios or practice courts. I still didn’t know anywhere near all the players, but recognised most, and did know the names of many. I also had a good idea which teams were which and had even learned to bring a hat and sunblock to games. Even better, some of the players knew who I was. In one game, everyone stopped playing, looked in my direction, shouted a bunch of Dutch with the word “Andrew!” in the middle, and then I was smacked in the head with the ball. At least they knew who I was! On earlier occasions when the ball came my way, I hadn’t noticed the warning at all because they didn’t use my name. This time, I looked up. Next time, I hope I recognise the scenario and get out of the way. We’ll see how that goes.

The 2017 season yielded some of my favourite basketball shots. I’ll present only a few here, but there are many, many more.

Figure 19 Displaying a much-needed mouth guard in Amsterdam, 2017. Sometimes I wish I had one too.

Figure 20 Ray Williams of Germany in Amsterdam, 2017

Figure 21 Jesper Jobse of team Amsterdam in Amsterdam, 2017

Figure 22 Bas Rozendaal of Team Amsterdam is blocked as teammates Jesper Jobse and Joey Schelvis look on in Breda 2017

Figure 23 Under 18 players from Concrete Lions and Open Run compete in Breda, 2017

Figure 24 World's #1 ranked player, Dejan Majstorovic of Serbia, with the ball. Gregory Pinas on left, in Den Haag 2017

Figure 25 Team Amsterdam's Joey Schelvis shoots while Serbia's Marko Zdero looks on, too late to stop the basket

Figure 26 Marko Zdero of Serbian team Novi Sad

Figure 27 Spectators on the sidelines at the Sportbox in Utrecht, 2017

Figure 28 Two players lose their balance simultaneously, the Sportbox, Utrecht 2017

Figure 29 Dunk Contest at the Sportbox in Utrecht, 2017

My favourite part of the 2017 season was the FIBA Eurocup, held in Amsterdam at the Museumplein. The games were held in a large stadium tent built on the great lawn behind the Rijksmuseum, home of many famous paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer, among many others. The stadium was packed top to bottom for the entire time I was there. After the Den Haag Challenger the previous year, it was great to see the increased awareness of 3X3 basketball among spectators. My impression is that this started with the second place finish at the World Cup in Nantes, France, of team Amsterdam in June. It was a sensation and managed to get on TV and many other media outlets. The Eurocup attracted top teams from around the world: The US, France, Serbia, Poland, Spain, Slovenia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Russia, Greece, and others.

Figure 30 Sjoerd van Vlisteren (the “flying Dutchman”) and Bas “Mountain” Rozendaal of team Amsterdam in Orange, Dejan Majstorovic and Marko Savic of team Serbia in white

I just hit the blogger image limit, so this will be continued in part two.