The late Carl Ervin, with his daughter Karlee and wife Penny, at his Seattle U. Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

But that’s not happening. Erv, one of the greatest high-school basketball players I’ve ever seen, lost a battle on Saturday with pancreatic cancer that I didn’t even know he was waging. Which is funny to say because we talked on the phone. And even at the beginning of the year he was lobbying me to attend the banner-hanging and jersey retirement ceremony at our alma mater.

I couldn’t attend because of personal matters and work obligations that now seem so trivial. Erv was relentless, but not once did he say, “Dude, I’m sick, you need to come.” Instead, Erv, the master facilitator and leader, said, “Man, you were as big a part of this as anyone.”

This also strikes me as funny. Erv was talking about Cleveland going unbeaten and winning the Washington state AA title in 1975, then moving up to AAA and winning the state title in 1976. He was talking about the team at our other alma mater, Asa Mercer Junior High, which like Cleveland was in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, where I grew up. That team included not only Erv, Jawann Oldham and James Woods, the trio that was the core of the high-school team, but guys like Levell Standifer and Fred Thompson, who were the core of the rivals at Franklin High School. Mike Bethea, the legendary coach at Rainier Beach, also was there. And of course the Mustangs went 88-0 during Erv’s tenure.

My “part” in all of this was first as editor of the Cleveland Journal, the student newspaper, and later as contributor to a weekly called the Beacon Hill News. I’d played rec ball with Erv and all the guys, including Clint Richardson, who averaged 34.1 points as a senior for O’Dea and nearly singlehandedly took down Cleveland in an epic, double-overtime district-championship matchup. He also played with Erv and Oldham at Seattle University, then won an NBA championship ring with the Philadelphia 76ers. Back then, there also were the likes of James Edwards, the Roosevelt center who played at Washington and won three rings during a 19-year pro career, and the late Keith Harrell (rest his soul), the leader of the 1974 Garfield “Superdogs,” who, like Erv, Oldham, Richardson and, ahem, me, went to Seattle U.

These were my generation’s version of the hoops-talent explosion that has graced the Seattle area the past decade-plus. And, bless them, they were the ones who set me on the realistic path, away from day dreams of being a 6-foot, Asian point guard in the “league,” to being a chronicler of basketball, which I still am, of course.

In my infinite creativity, I dubbed Erv “Cool,” as in Cool Carl, as in Cool and the Gang (after Kool and the Gang, one of the party bands of our time; you know, “Celebration,” and all). Oldham would go on to a distinguished NBA career and Woods had a nice career at Washington, but Erv definitely was Cleveland’s ringleader. I saw Richardson, of course, at O’Dea, and watched Pearl Washington drop 58 points, without taking a jump shot, for Boy’s High in Brooklyn. And I watched the likes of Kevin Durant during evaluation tournaments in Las Vegas. As a high-school marvel, Erv was as good as all of them. He was a magician with the basketball, a cat we used to call “Voodoo” or “Black Magic.” You have to consider the era. Maybe guys today are doing what Erv used to do with the ball, but Erv was doing his thing almost 40 years ago.

l-r: Clint Richardson, Jawann Oldham, Keith Harrell and Carl Ervin.

I can hear us all chortling, “Don’t you do that, Erv!”

A big part of me went to Seattle University so I could continue to follow my “boys,” including Erv, whom I knew likely was to verbal there. I was placed solidly in that path after the Eagles pulled off their historic, state-title double and the Beacon Hill News asked me to write them a story about the team. It was my first front-page story in a non-student newspaper. Convinced I had proven myself, I knocked on the News’ door and informed the owner, the late Jim Flaherty, that I was free to work for him full time. His newspaper didn’t employ writers, beside himself, Flaherty informed me. But I was determined, and kept going back, the edition with my front-page story always folded underneath an arm.

Finally, Flaherty’s son, John, either worn down or amused, told me the place could use someone to sweep the floors and clean the bathrooms. I accepted immediately. I was in the newspaper business! I even painted the building that summer. But I worked fast and, during the “extra” time, learned to set type, run a line camera, sell ads and, of course, write stories. And I never stopped. The Beacon Hill News bought the Capitol Hill Times, so I started covering Seattle U. basketball for them as well as the school newspaper. When Erv was drafted by the Sonics in the seventh round, I covered his training camp for a weekly publication called The Argus, now defunct. I never got to write about Erv for the Seattle Times, but I did pen stories about Oldham and Richardson, and I kept in touch with Erv over the years.

I hope you all know I’m not trying to turn the death of the late, great point guard about myself. I couldn’t have written anything better about Erv’s greatness as a person than the beautifully crafted column by Jerry Brewer in The Seattle Times. My point is, so much of life turns on such seemingly small and insignificant things. If Erv had not been so inspiring and so full of goodness, maybe I never would have become a sportswriter.

Truth be known, my favorite Carl Ervin moment was years ago, when he called me to apologize for a (different) struggle I had not known he was waging. He vowed during that conversation to stay virtuous; he said it was important that I heard it all from him. Next thing I knew, he was coaching, running a very successful pro-am summer league and doing work all over the community.

So when I had to read about Erv’s death, my first instinct honestly wasn’t to wish he had told me about his illness. I had a chance a few months back to honor him with my presence, but I hadn’t been paying attention – to life and therefore him. And now that time has passed. There are so many moments and people that we all really ought to take time on occasion to cherish. It takes only a little bit of focus. I suppose that is the last bit of wisdom that Carl Ervin dropped on me. I wish I could thank him for it.

A public viewing will be held Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the Bonney-Watson Funeral Home on Capitol Hill, 1732 Broadway. A memorial service will be held at Mount Zion Baptist Church, 1634 19th Ave., Seattle, at 11 a.m. on July 9.

Where and when I grew up, we’d say that so often, it became a way of life, a way of thinking and believing. A lot of NBA players come up in similar circumstances, so I can’t imagine that they didn’t also hear that bit of wisdom uttered a time or two.

LeBron: What Comes Around

I don’t know the guy. He came after I stopped covering the NBA. After 17 years, it had become, for me, a league of antics. You know what I mean: Whenever there’s a crowd of adults, some kid runs up to the hot microphone and starts singing, or some boy throws a frog into a flock of girls. After starting out knowing Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson and Michael Jordan as genuine people, the league for me had devolved into a silly show with its players clamoring for more and more attention, as if all the dollars weren’t enough.

So I don’t know whether to feel sorry for King James. There are real lines drawn these days between the NBA and the public; the media doesn’t literally live with the players, the way we did in our day. So the media feels left out and no longer feels accountable — it can write and say whatever it wants because it never really has to face its subjects anymore — and the players continually retreat. Now everything is played out in public, and James’ really is the first generation to come up completely in the hot glow of the media microscope. Today, that’s got to make someone like James squirm, though I’ll give him this — the cat keeps digging it deeper and deeper for himself. Then again, this is the age of social media, so the players can add to the cacophony surrounding themselves.

For goshsakes, after all the fussing and fighting and hating that went on during the just-concluded NBA postseason, this is what James had to say after his Miami Heat lost decisive Game 6 of the NBA Finals to the Dallas Mavericks:

“All the people that were rooting me on to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life they had before. They have the same personal problems they had to today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want with me and my family and be happy with that.”

Wow. Blind arrogance really is a legacy killer. After Tiger Wood’s stunning slip from relevance, if there’s one thing we know about the mighty, it’s that they do fall. Fast. And hard.

Kareem: Statuesque?

There’s another player who once made me wait an interminably long time for an interview before finally informing me, “I don’t talk to white boys.”

“What if I’m not white,” I asked.

“What are you then,” he replied.

“Japanese,” I said.

“Well, I don’t talk to Japs neither,” he said.

His coach later tried to defend him, saying the player had to be kidding. But I once observed the same player stroking himself in front of a female sportswriter, so I doubt it. Yes, I know what became of this guy, and it ain’t pretty.

Yes, karma is a bitch. And James’ comeuppance isn’t just about not backing up his boasts, it’s come to revealing himself as a shrinking fourth-quarter violet and the public spectacle of the seemingly direct relationship between the recession of his crunch-time production with that of his hairline.

Even Dallas owner Mark Cuban, who never meet a jab he didn’t want to plant in the back of an NBA executive or official, stood down during the James/Heat feeding frenzy. Afterward, he explained that, in the face of his team winning, he didn’t want to tempt karma.

After years of the orchestrated chalk toss led to The Decision and turning “taking my talents to South Beach” into a cultural catchphrase, after all that and making Akron feeling like Mayberry if Andy ever left for, say, Raleigh, James didn’t just lay low, bathe in humility and let the karmic after-shocks subside. He didn’t keep tempting fate, he outright taunted it, up to his and Dwyane Wade’s ridiculous mocking of Dirk Nowitzki’s health issues. It reeked of “boys” sitting around over beers, or worse, and thinking up stupid things to do. And these knuckleheads actually did it, in front of millions, on the biggest stage of their profession.

Dexter: Miami killer

So, with a world thirsting for King James blood, how could Nowitzki and the Mavericks possibly lose? This was the Portland Trail Blazers upending the playground bully Philadelphia 76ers in 1977. And then again, it really wasn’t, since Dr. J (Julius Erving) was a regal presence and the perception of his Sixers was born out of a kind of public ignorance that cannot exist in today’s world.

Though I recently wrote about how nice a guy Shaquille O’Neal is (see When You’re a Freak, Freaky Things Happen to You), the most recent big winners of our time in the NBA were not perfect. Jordan womanized and gambled. Kobe Bryant had his sexual assault episode in Eagle, Colo. But I knew both to be “good people,” and am sure I was not alone. Improbably, back in the day, Jordan and I were alone in the Bulls’ Kingdome locker room and talked joyously about fatherhood. I spoke at length with Bryant early in his career and found him to be respectful and engaging.

But I don’t know LeBron James. At least I hope I don’t. Because, if his public persona is really who he is, then what comes around just went around.

Shaq: "When you're a freak, freaky things happen."

I could go on a Shaqilicious rampage here, but I had my time and so did Shaquille O’Neal. Since he announced his retirement from pro ball, appropriately enough on Twitter, there already has been much written about his place in NBA history and his abundant nicknames. I just wanted to drop a few personal memories and acknowledge that it required Shaq’s retirement to prod me out of my mini-retirement from the blogosphere.

Way back when I was still a newspaper writer, I wrote a large piece about Shaq as an emerging crossover star (see Welcome to ShaqWorld). He hadn’t even won his first NBA title, though he’d dropped his first recorded verse and filmed an ill-fated movie. This was during a time when a writer could earn big-time access to superstars, and I hung around him for a few days in El-Lay.

With Shaq, there was no breaking-in period. The first day we were supposed to hook up after a Lakers practice in El Segundo, I was listening to coach Phil Jackson when I … left the ground. Shaq had picked me up like a rag doll. “Let’s go,” he said in that basso profundo, half-whisper of his.

I have some stories that I guess I’ll just keep between me and the Big Aristotle (my favorite Shaq-name). However, that half-whisper of his is part of one of my all-time favorite, mass interview moments. This was during the 1995 NBA Finals, Shaq’s first, between his Orlando Magic and the Houston Rockets. A group of us, not large by today’s standards, were staged around Shaq, as I recall, outside so it was at times difficult to hear him.

Suddenly, Kelly Carter, the don’t-take-no-stuff writer then for USA Today, offered, “Shaquille, you need to quit mumbling.”

At which point Shaq smiled that tilted smile of his, cleared his throat and bumped up his volume.

Yes, in professional sports there have been few bigger than life than Shaq Diesel. Certainly, there have been few, if any, professional athletes who’ve allowed such a human public persona.

Vivian once wanted to play at Tennessee.

A couple years later, after I’d given up coaching to avoid conflicts for my Web site, now ESPN HoopGurlz, I’d tell anyone who’d listen that I used to coach a kid who was (indeed, is) as explosive and fluid an athlete as any I’d seen across the country. They’d roll their eyes or, like so many TV commentators, mispronounce her name as “Frier-son.” Today, April 8, 2010, I wondered if anyone remembered that. When the Tulsa Shock called Vivian’s name as the 31st pick in the WNBA Draft, I wondered if anyone recalled her as the kid the HoopGurlz guy used to brag about.

Vivian with the HoopGurlz.

Until Vivian went to play for Kelly Graves at Gonzaga, I’d only seen her perform such miracles in a HoopGurlz uniform. Vivian had what you would call a strong personality, so Chris and I pushed her by challenging her. We played her at the point, we had her shoot threes, we drilled her on the boxes. I’ll never forget one game, the summer before her sophomore year in high school, when she embarrassed a Pac-10 signee, hitting five three-pointers and once blocking a corner three-point attempt by this player. Vivian got the block by closing out from underneath the basket.

Viv, my daughter Sassia and Danielle Greaby.

I’ll love Vivian forever for the way she treated my daughters, with love and respect. Whenever my oldest, Sassia, went down on the court, Viv would be over, menacing the perpetrators. Likewise, she had a way with my younger daughter, Mika, a special needs kid who still equates the whole HoopGurlz experience with her sister — and Vivian.

Viv, cutting the net after Garfield's title.

Back in the day, Vivian Frieson was a kid who loved to chat up officials. She helped Garfield High of Seattle win a state championship, but was only a fifth wheel on that team and no better than a second fiddle on others. So it took someone like Kelly Graves to believe in her. Believe me, Chris and I believed. We’d seen her do stuff like drive the baseline, wrap the ball around the backboard and scoop in a reverse layup, prompting us to chortle, “Holy (bleep)?” in unison. Graves believed and we all saw what that wrought.

Likewise, I hope the Tulsa Shock’s Nolan Richardson believes. After all, you don’t always know when you capture a little lightning in a bottle. She might just do something you’ll remember the rest of your life.

Nikki Lewis, mother and coach Fayth Goodrich Lewis and MVP Angel Goodrich celebrate.

I’ve taken better photos, but a big part of journalism (and history) is being at the right place, doing the right thing at the right time. And this is how the above image of Fayth Goodrich and her daughters, Nikki Lewis and Angel Goodrich, came to be in the exhibit, “Indivisible,” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (the exhibit will tour the country; see Web site for details).

Back in the summer of 2008, I’d decided that Mindi Rice and I would cover the Native American Basketball Invitational (NABI) in Phoenix as part of our mission at ESPN HoopGurlz to show high-school girls’ basketball players throughout the nation, of every culture. It was a rich, unforgettable experience, made ever more special by the Smithsonian surprise.

The stereotypes of “Rez Ball,” I found, were fairly accurate — most teams were packs of quick, slick guards who could shoot the crap out of the ball. What was unexpected, but delightful, was the support the event received. Some of the gyms were packed, which is becoming less rare for girls’ basketball, and some of the tribal rivalries transferred onto the courts.

Telisha Joe passes in front of the crowd.

A full house.

Semifinals and finals were at U.S. Airways Arena.

Angel Goodrich at NABI.

Marysville-Pilchuk coach Julie Martin and her players.

While shooting a day of the Washington State 4A tournament this week, I really noticed how dogged most photographers were in their pursuit of the ball. For example, I often try to “shoot through” a play — keeping the shutter depressed in a burst even after a basket is made or a foul committed — because there are reactions and even consequences such as hair pulling, stomping and rabbit punches (not all sugar and spice, this sport of girls’ basketball). This is my photographic equivalent of following through. All of the guys shooting around me stopped when the action did. I wondered why they stopped, and they probably wondered why I did not.

It’s maybe because I was trying to get something I noticed earlier in the action, like these neon shoes.

A lot of times, it’s not “chimping” (looking through your just-recorded images on the LCD screen of your camera) during timeouts and finding animation in a face like official Al Perez, set against the neon art installation at the Tacoma Dome (yes, I have a thing for neon).

And sometimes the enthusiasm of a cheerleader helps tell the story about the atmosphere of the competition.

You also cannot assume that you got all that a subject had to offer in just one visit. Follow-up can offer equally good rewards. Julie Martin, the Marysville-Pilchuk coach, originally piqued my interest because she was wearing a coat on the sidelines during the game. Checking that out, I noticed the expressions of her and her players. I went back later, when MPHS was in the midst of a frenzied comeback, and got this.

Finally, I might keep shooting after a play because the aftermath is more interesting. Here, Kentwood’s Sanda Milovic is consoled by an assistant coach and teammate Kylie Huerta after she missed a potentially game-tying shot during an upset loss to Mead.

Again, the ball appears in none of the above shots, yet I hope you agree they are interesting unto themselves, and help tell the story of a day at an event that was colorful and emotional — though played with a ball.

One imagined version of the Apple tablet

I hope it goes almost without saying that newspapers on an iPad must constantly be updated. Gone are the days when one, two or three editions of a paper and published and the day is done. Because of the Web, news cycles now are 24/7. This would be a starting point for me to even consider installing a newspaper app – for free – on my new device. Otherwise, I’m happy with the NYT (I’m a print subscriber which probably means I will be grandfathered into any new, digital offerings) and excellent news apps from the Associated Press, CNN and National Public Radio (NPR).

To get me to pay for a subscription via iTunes, newspapers also will have to offer:

News Judgment Reflected in Intuitive Layout

That’s a mouth full, I realize. Though a lot of people are tired of the newspaper industry’s we’re-smarting-so-we’ll-tell-you-what-you-should-know approach, there still is an expectation of some guidance through a massive world’s daily events while everyone is living their lives at 100 mph. Curation is a buzz word in online journalism these days. Yes, journalists should be more in touch and therefore able to at least point others in the right direction, as opposed to ramming standards and points of view down people’s throats.

So, on a 10-inch screen, I expect to see some kind of layout, similar to the way the news is laid out on paper. I expect to see that layout change as news event dictates, minute to minute, if need be. I also expect some alternate layouts – stories listed by time and date posted, for example, or clickable headlines listed in order of importance (as of course decided by human editors). I further expect to be able to navigate to categories or sections. For a decent example, check out Esquire Magazine’s iPhone reader, developed by Iceberg Magazine. You can flip or flick your way through the book, page by page, or call up a list of contents, which can be sorted several different ways.

Yes, Let Me Also Decide

Yes, I mean some form of customization and not just sorting options. I should, for example, be able to designate my favorite teams, newsmakers and, even, writers. When David Pogue posts his witty gadgets column for the NYT, maybe I want that offered up before all other news. At some point, some genius will come up with a system of allowing users to assign a weight to their news priorities, allowing software to “lay out” a page that’s uniquely yours or mine. The Glenn Nelson version of the New York Times might have a Seattle Mariners story stripped across the top, with a big image of a Victoria’s Secret model anchoring the page, a politics story down the right rail, Pogue’s column on the left, with a movie or dance review and fashion story sharing the bottom of the page. We can dream …

Images – Still and Moving

I will expect pictures – lots of them. My mission as a journalist is to take people places they cannot go; I expect other journalists to do this for me as well. That can be done with words but, let’s face it, we’re reading fewer and fewer of those online. I will expect to be able to tap a photo to isolate it and make it full screen, to pinch to shrink or use two fingers to expand and zoom. Maybe two taps will reveal a whole photo gallery, or an audio photo gallery.

Some photos should be specially designated screen grabs from video that is brought to life with a tap or three-finger swipe or some such gesture. And the video cannot the kind of choppy, unedited crap that I’ve heard some newspaper “multimedia” gurus argue that consumers will accept. That’s rubbish. The point of reference for younger consumers, in particular (and even budding geezers), are their Nintendos or X-Boxes – or Avatar. Newspaper videos don’t have to be Jack Bauer on steroids, but they should be well-shot, edited, emotional and, yes, in high definition. Think Travis Fox’s work for the Washington Post. The barriers to this kind of work (financially and otherwise) have all but vanished and the only limitations are the story-telling abilities of today’s journalists.

We Can Hear, Too

Audio is part of the immersive, take-me-there experience. What does the subject sound like – even if it’s just the answer to one question? What does war sound like? How about Game 7 of the NBA Finals? I think audio even is a great way to get a quick take on a subject matter from a non-writing expert. One cannot misspell an audio clip (though they certain can butcher grammar).

Context and Digging Deeper

One of the beauties of digital news delivery is that all content continues to live and is relatively easy to access. Important people and terms should be hyperlinked to other content. If I’m reading about, say, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), maybe I can find out what he looks and sounds like by clicking on his name, which pops up a profile box. Come to think of it, I also should be able to do this with, say, any SI swimsuit model. Every story has the potential to have a related content box imbedded or at the end. This in fact could, in time, change newspaper writing to a more consumer-friendly style. Honestly, though perfectly rational to a journalist, the alien-just-landed style of writing which assumes a reader is tackling a subject for the first time ever is getting old and makes a lot of writers feel unapproachable and disassociated from a lot of readers.

I also would go the “related” route a bit further. Newspaper chains can offer alternate takes on topics from a writer or columnist in another city. The L.A. Times, say, could offer a Chicago Tribune story on the same subject. Or a newspaper such as The Seattle Times, which has relationships with dozens of hyperlocal blogs, can offer those as a companion to a particular story. What makes this all powerful is the context, not the “additional content” as a value-added proposition.

In Conclusion

This is not a definitive list by any means. My point is that newspapers cannot merely offer up their websites for pay on the iPad. They have to do what they probably should have done 5-10 years ago and tailor their content to the digital age and tastes. Someone, somewhere, will exceed the expectations outlined above, and blow everyone’s minds. That, to me, is the most exciting aspect of the Apple reveal in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Bob Blackburn, 1924-2010

“Well, you kno-ooow …” There was no such thing as ESPN back then, and we had only five TV channels, none of which carried Sonic games.

When I started covering the Sonics for The Times, much of the championship team still was intact. I remember a buddy asking me, “What’s he like?” Who, I asked, Gus? Sikma? Lenny? “No,” he insisted, “Blackburn!” Yeah, that’s where the guy stood with a lot of us.

Back in those days, NBA teams still flew commercial. So there was a lot of sitting around on airplanes, standing around in airports or baggage claim, staged on busses, before disembarking for dinners and furious tennis matches. All the while, I did a lot of listening because of Bob. The listening skills have come in handy during my career. I think a lot of athletes liked being interviewed by me because I listened. I gotta admit, I’d been programmed for 10 years by Bob. During his last year with the Sonics, Bob and I did what may have been the first sports call-in show on KJR. I remember being startled because Bob began the first show by asking me questions and insisting that I speak.

The Voice

A crafty tennis player, Bob frustrated me and neutralized my youthful advantages with spin and guile. And he could keep those gums flapping. Once, during a doubles match on the roof of the Hyatt Regency in Dallas, I sent a serve screaming … right into the kidney of my partner, Lenny Wilkens, then the Sonic coach with whom I was in the midst of a tense feud. Leave it to Bob to blurt, out loud, something about my “striking a blow for the media.”

I swear Bob could out-talk the Devil himself. He was so glib, he could render mime-like the late Jimmy Jones, part of the Sonics entourage as broadcaster along with Jim Marsh, analyst and lefty with a big serve. Bob was muted, temporarily, in 1983 because of triple-bypass surgery. When he returned, he loved talking about his good fortune and new dietary ways, which irked Jones, who’d had at least one quadruple bypass. Jones would order a big steak and maybe desert in retaliation, but the move would backfire, serving only to fuel more culinary commentary by Bob.

The past 10 years I ran into Bob too infrequently. He was of course still talking. About his auctioneering (how poetic is that?) and his cruises. I hung on to every word, as if the Bill Russell-coached Sonics were marching to the franchise’s first playoff berth. Or drafting the X-Man ahead of Detlef. He’d had his mic retired, but that hardly quieted him.

The Sonics – and the NBA – were my job for 17 years, so I have not missed them since they moved to Oklahoma City. Until now, that is. For me, Bob Blackburn was the Sonics. And now they’re both gone, reminding me that so, too, is my youth. The silence is not golden, much less welcomed. It never was.

I’m a big fan of jazz and a big fan of trumpet players, dating back to Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan and Miles Davis and stretching to Wynton Marsalis, whom I started following when he was just a young lion in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Marriott is moving into the realm of the former because he’s more of an artist than musician, with inventive and emotive approaches to his tunes. I never get tired of his music.

This is my third post about Marriott, and each has discussed a shooting (still and video) environment with its own unique challenges. The first shoot took place at Ama Ama, a restaurant and bar with no stage and little ambient lighting; the second shoot was at The Triple Door, with its big stage and good stage lighting. Tula’s, which has been the local showcase for jazz, is more typical of jazz clubs you’ll find in other parts of the country, with a small stage engulfed by tables and a bar, with stage lighting that is a bit more localized.

As with 98 percent of jazz performances, this one took place at night and in challenging light, destined to put my Nikon D3 and Nikon D700 to the ultimate test. I have very fast glass — a 200mm f2 and 85mm f1.4 — but I also want to change up once in a while. This time I brought along a 12-24mm f2.8, wide-angle lens. While 2.8 is fast, it often doesn’t cut it when it comes to my usual photographic gig, which is shooting girl’s basketball players in dimly lit gymnasiums.

In the following, I was going for a tools-of-the-trade shot and wanted pretty much everything clear, thus the larger f-stop. This is hand-held at 1/8 shutter speed, so bracing and grip, while always important, is even more so. The D3 delivers great quality at an astronomic ISO.

Nikon D3, 14 mm F2.8 at ISO 3200, 1/8 sec, f6.3.

Here, I wanted to show where the notes emerged. I was head on, with the 200 mm on a monopod. It’s the D700 that this time delivers at an even higher ISO.

Nikon D700, 200 mm f2 at ISO 4000, 1/250 sec, f2.0.

As we’ve shown time and time again, the latest generation Nikon pro and prosumer bodies deliver admirably in low-light conditions. I almost take it for granted. Several of the stills in the multimedia piece were taken in very little ambient light. The challenges here mostly were trying to get the right vantage while maneuvering in very tight quarters by squeezing between customers or squatting on the floor — all of which is much harder with a video camera.

Speaking of which, my video camera is new. I swapped my larger, somewhat nicer Sony for a JVC GY-HM100U, which doesn’t function as well in low light, but is much smaller and thus more useful for me since I travel so much. That said, the unit is a marvel of ever-shrinking electronics, with three CCD sensors, XLR jacks or built-in stereo mic (I used an external and got a little better sound than I had with the Sony), and lots of features in a camera that basically fits in your palm.

The biggest deal about the JVC is that it records onto little SDHC cards in formats native to Final Cut Pro. That means, yes, no converting files before importing them to Final Cut. The workflow starts by dragging files off the card directly into Final Cut for editing. This is the only way I could have produced this piece (even as uncomplicated as the video is) so quickly. In fact, it took much longer to edit and process the still photos. The end result is that I believe I used stills in a video as effectively as ever.