Why There's No NBA

It’s called a lockout. It means the NBA will not allow any players to work until they agree to certain labor terms.

To make things simpler, let’s picture a simple company with employees. There’s a labor agreement set up that dictates that employees get certain benefits like medical, car and house loans, 13th month pays and bonuses. Now let’s say that the labor agreement has expired and the company must work with the employee union to come up with a new labor agreement – what benefits to keep, what benefits to remove and what benefits to add. Until a new agreement has been ratified, no one can work – employees won’t earn salary and the company sits still.

The company tells the employees that the company did not earn much and proposes to slash some of the benefits and lower the salaries of the employees to break even. The employees counter by saying that their salaries and benefits should not be reduced just because the company made bad decisions in running the business. The company comes back and tells the employees that it is not negotiable and that they must agree to less benefits and a lower salary. The employees say they will agree to only a very small salary decrease but things should pretty much the same on the employees’ end. Company says that’s not going to happen, let’s just not work. Employees agreed. Both parties walk away.

So here we are, the NBA locked out the players and all employees so essentially, there’s no NBA. That means no games until they ratify an agreement and right now, they are so far apart and too stubborn to budge.

So what are they arguing about?

#1 Money – Of course they’ll argue about money. Remember, the National Football League also had a lockout this year but it was resolved on time. The difference: the NFL is making lots of money, they just need to agree how much each side gets. The NBA says they lost money last season and most of the teams are in the negative. The players are saying that the NBA did make money last season (the NBA experienced an increase in revenues compared to last year) and that the NBA is just using accounting magic to tweak the numbers their way. Hey, I did daily reporting before… numbers can and will be tweaked.

#2 Salary Cap – Each team is given a max amount of money to pay to its players. Teams are allowed to go beyond the salary cap but will have to pay extra to the league. The owners now want a “hard cap” which means you can’t go beyond the salary cap even if you’re willing to pay extra. This means rich teams (LA, NY, Chicago) cannot stock up on talent and overpay players. Remember, some teams cannot afford to pay extra and with everyone else overpaying players, you end up with a bad roster and at the bottom of the standings. With a hard cap, teams are not encouraged to overpay players anymore and that’s why the players don’t want it.

#3 Salaries – Meet Carlos Boozer, starting power forward for the Bulls, virtually plays no defense, aging, often injured, decent scorer and rebounder and the Bulls will pay him 80 million dollars for 5 years. The 5 years is the max length of contract anyone can give and in order for the Bulls to outbid others, they had to offer their maximum available. If he gets hurt (and he will), the Bulls are essentially tied to the contract and will still need to pay him. The league wants to get rid of this scenario by having shorter max lengths in contracts and opt out clauses if players could no longer hold their end of the deal. To no surprise, the players don’t want these either.

#4 Revenue Sharing – It’s basically pooling the income of all teams then giving each a fair share. It’s the players’ answer to the claims that some teams are losing money.

#5 Bragging Rights – For the past labor negotiations, the players have always been the winners. That’s why you have such favorable benefits for players and the players don’t want to lose any of it. The NBA commissioner has made it clear that he doesn’t want to lose to the union yet again.

#6 Age Limit in the NBA Draft – Remember when you were a kid and you wanted a toy so you grab the one you want and grab an extra toy and ask mom to buy both. Mom would tell you to buy only one and so you put down the extra toy (and do a good “sad” acting job) and just “settle” with the one you want. This is the extra thing that the players union is fighting for but don’t really care about. The problem is, the owners are wise to the players’ tactics and this will probably go down the drain.

As of Oct 12, the first 2 weeks of the NBA schedule have been cancelled and we don’t know when a deal will be finalized.

Oh well.

2011 Chicago Photo Walk

A photo walk is where a group of photographers walk through a certain area, take pictures and share ideas. This year, world famous photographer Mike Lao led his flock through Grant Park and the Museum Campus on a cool sunny day. I brought my Nikon D300 and a wide angle lens since I’ll be taking landscape pictures. Jaye brought a point and shoot because she’s like the Chuck Norris of photography, the landscape adheres to whatever camera she’s bringing.

I’ll be sharing some of my photos below as well as explain my composition thoughts and techniques. Feel free to comment or ask stuff. You’ll also notice my photography style: I love colors, I love shooting animals and other woodland creatures, I love weird angles and I rarely take pictures of people.



This picture is from Grant Park includes four elements of design: shape (the sculptures against the sky), form (the shadows), line (the shapes seem to gravitate to this point in the center of the photo) and color (contrasting blue and a very dark red). I placed a big empty space in the middle to highlight the sculptures by shooting low, extremely low – I took this with the camera almost flat on the ground. The effect? The sculptures seem taller (as tall as the buildings) and I minimized the strong green color off the picture.



There are two ways to shoot this picture of the Metra Train going through Grant Park: shoot horizontally (landscape) to get a good picture of the city skyline or shoot vertically (portrait) to highlight the train and the tracks. The horizontal picture is fine but you get too much empty space on the lower left and lower right parts of the picture (and empty space is boring). Since I don’t like having too many subjects on a picture (overwhelms the brain), I took a picture of the train and the tracks with just a little skyline. I wish the sun cooperated just a little bit though.



This is the pedestrian bridge over Grant Park and it highlights one thing: shape. I was waiting for the guy on the lower right to do an interesting pose but he just scratched his nose. Oh well.



This is an apartment near Field Museum and I wanted to shoot it with something in the background or foreground. If I shot a picture of the building alone, it would look like an ad for a spare apartment there or something so I included something very near (the plants), something very far (the sky) and something in the middle (the trees). The sunlight and the shadows also added some color contrast.

Ah squirrels, one of my favorite subjects. I sat down beside this tree and a squirrel came by to ask if I had food. I checked my bag, pulled my camera and took his picture. I said I had food and so he waited. I asked him to come closer, he did and I took more pictures. He asked for food and I said all I had were a lens cap, a spare battery and a tripod. I said I was sorry, I took his picture again and he climbed up a tree. Composition technique? None. Shooting strategy? Learn your camera’s “machine gun” shooting mode, aim fast and talk to squirrels.



On my way to the campus, I saw Louvre aiming his camera at this broken fountain with water just gushing senselessly. I asked what the heck he was doing and he just said “birds”. “Birds?! There are no birds!” then two birds landed from a tree and had a drink right in front of his camera. He took a couple pictures and since I wasn’t ready, I had to swing my camera across my body, turn on the camera, adjust the focus and all these jerky movements caused the birds to fly away. Louvre wasn’t happy and we waited for more birds to arrive. Composition lesson: Ask permission from your friend first before taking pictures of his bird.

One more thing, when taking a picture of something or someone who’s looking at something else either on the left or right, add some empty space for them to look at. In this picture, the birds are looking at the right and so I included half the canvas for them to look at. You don’t need to include the actual object they’re looking at, just some empty space will do.




For the two photos above, shoot the subject in a frame within a frame. The bird is framed by the leaves while the Shedd Aquarium is framed by the silhouette of nearby trees. Wedding photographers often use this technique (with a wide open aperture to emphasize bokeh).

I was on the fence with this picture but the silhouettes are just so striking and the texture effect of the water is interesting. Note that this was taken from an overlooking site and so to have a flatter lake, I had to shoot again as low as possible – this means lying down on my belly and lowering my camera almost into the water while making sure I was balanced and I wouldn’t roll into the lake. This is a little advanced so take note. The angle of the leg corresponds to the shutter speed and aperture of the camera. If you’re shooting with a smaller aperture, the leg needs to be raised higher and vice versa. Very… Advanced… Technique…

The skyline picture is more challenging than you think. First, you need to shoot in manual. Never trust your light meters at this point. Second, you need to be there right before sunset and right after sunset so you have pictures of the skyline against a blue sky and against an orange sky. Third, use a timer to reduce shaking. Fourth, use your mirror delay (where the camera opens the mirror then waits one second before opening the shutter). Fifth, use the lowest ISO possible. Sixth, active your noise reduction option on your camera. It means there’s a bigger gap in between shots but really, who cares? You’re not in a hurry right? Seventh, bring a tripod and secure it either by hanging your bag on the tripod or keeping your tripod as low as possible. Eighth, stay away from your camera while it’s shooting on a long exposure. Remove the strap around your neck and don’t hold the camera or the tripod because that would just shake everything. Ninth, shoot multiple pictures. Even with the same settings, the wind will be blowing differently with every shot and that would make each picture different. Tenth, keep an eye on your gear!