It is easy to get complacent as a photographer, especially a sports photographer. Many of my assignments are at the high school level, in gyms with horrible lighting and not a lot of options for remote camera work. There are no catwalks and shooting from an elevated position usually doesn't provide the desired results because the gyms don't have a lot of height. I try and find something different at each game I shoot, a different position or an entirely different perspective. Sometimes, depending on the assignment, the editor just needs action shots and nothing else. My approach is to get those required shots done first and then I try and look for feature shots, or I will mess around with a remote camera. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. a good frame from a remote camera is a bonus, but I don't rely on them. I have setup remotes at a few different venues, Wichita's Intrust Bank Arena, Topeka's Expocentre, ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City and a few of the local gyms that I frequently shoot in here in Wichita. Setting up a remote in an arena is much different than a local high school gym, it requires permission from the management at the arena, a lot of prep work to do it safely and liability insurance. At the high school level depending on the venue, the options can be limited. The first photo is an example of an image from a remote camera attached to a guard rail at the top of the bleachers. Although not ideal, it does give a different perspective but it isn't high enough to completely separate the background. I used two Manfrotto Magic Arms with super clamps, safety cables and a Pocket Wizard Plus 3 to fire the camera. The second image is from the cat walk at Intrust Bank Arena. This type of setup is much more difficult to setup then the previous one but can make for great photos. I tried to put the remote centered over the basket with focus on the net, and used a little wider aperture to increase my depth of field. I used a 80-200mm lens for this particular image. The third image is from the catwalk in the Expocentre in Topeka, Kansas. There wasn't a spot to place the camera centered directly over the net so I chose a spot where I thought I could make a nice image. This particular image was made with a 400mm lense, which isn't a lot of fun to haul up to a catwalk! The last image is from a venue that is one of my favorite places for overhead pictures. This image was from a remote camera on the roof of ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City at the College Softball World Series. Of all the images below, this one was the easiest, I simply found a spot on the roof where I would get a nice shadow and framed the pitching circle trying to capture a nice image with a shadow. I used a 70-200mm lense, ISO 1600, f5 with a shutter speed of somewhere around 1/1600th I think. The obvious advantage of remote cameras are it allows you to be in multiple places at the same time and make different pictures.
Remote camera from the top row of a high school gym.
Intrust Bank Arena catwalk
This would have been a better image if it had been strobed, but it is different picture which is what I was going for
From the rooftop of ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in OKC