Wow. People sure are interested in putting lights in arenas. I got a lot of feedback and questions about all that stuff. In a previous post, I answered a question about lighting high school gyms, which we basically don’t do at the Tribune. Photographer Eli Lucero, working up in Logan, Utah, emailed me with his experience lighting high school gyms. Lucero covers three high schools, so everyone there knows him and he’s got good access and contacts. Here’s what he had to say, and at the bottom there’s a link to some of his photos:
You mentioned that right now you are not strobing your high school games.
I have strobed every h.s. basketball game for the last six years now and it
isn’t as hard as you might think.
I am using two white lightning monoblocks which run about $400 each. Most
of the time I just bounce them into the ceiling at full power. Depending
on the roof, I can shoot anywhere from iso 200-640 and f/4. Set up time
is about 5 minutes and I can take them down in about 10 minutes.
I have attached a couple of photos that were still on my hard drive. There
are also two USU photos as well. The white lightning strobes are 800 watts
and can light a large arena as well. Both photos were from the Big West
Tournament in Anaheim two years ago. Setting up there was not easy though.
That building sucks for easy access and it took almost eight hours to get
them in and six hours to pull them out after the last game. Anyway, enough
rambling for now.
To see a gallery of Lucero’s strobed sports photos, click here.
TrentHead Slash Blog 
December 2, 2006 at 2:04 am
We did something funny when I was working in Columbia, MO. One of the local high schools asked us why photos from their gym looked bad, and what could we do to make them look better. “Install strobes” was our response, and their booster club promptly paid for two white lightnings and a control box to be placed in the gym that were for our paper to exclusively use.
Seeing as how there are two schools in town, and they are very competitive, a couple years later we went to the other school and said “look what they did for us. it makes photos in their gym look a lot better.” And what do you know, they bought us a set of two as well. Permanently installed in the ceiling aimed at the court, just like the first school. All paid for by the booster club.
So all basketball, volleyball and wrestling was lit, and all we had to do was show up with a couple PocketWizards and a key to unlock the control box.