Getting floor access at the NBA All-Star Game is a different category of experience. Chase Center doesn't feel like an arena when you're standing on the court. It feels like a stage. The energy is different down there. Players aren't in game mode yet. They're loose, laughing, moving between conversations with people they spend 80 regular-season games trying to beat. And Stephen Curry, who calls this building home, was exactly that. At ease, smiling, the center of gravity in a room full of All-Stars. On his own floor.
The 2025 All-Star Weekend in San Francisco was one of those events where everything lines up. The production, the crowd, the athletes, the celebrities, all of it in one place for 48 hours. With floor-level access, the goal was straightforward: move smart, stay out of the way, and make sure the lens was in the right place every time the moment arrived.
"The floor is where the real story is. Not the game. The twenty minutes before it."
The AT&T Slam Dunk Contest was the standout moment of the weekend. Stephon Castle, the San Antonio Spurs rookie and one of the most exciting young players in the league, was spectacular. Watching him launch toward the rim with the arena going sideways around him was a reminder of why this event still matters. The crowd was already out of their seats before he left the ground. Getting that from floor level, with the full backdrop of Chase Center lit up behind him, was the kind of shot you plan for and still can't fully prepare for.
Shooting in portrait format throughout was the right call. Vertical framing puts you inside the moment instead of documenting it from outside. The players fill the frame. The arena lights go edge to edge overhead. You lose the wide-angle remove and gain something more intimate, more present. These aren't venue photos. They're portraits that happen to have 18,000 people in the background.
Beyond the court, the celebrity presence made All-Star Weekend feel like a cultural event as much as a basketball one. The Bay Area showed up in full: E-40, the Bay's own rap legend, was courtside draped in all yellow Louis Vuitton, repping home the way only he can. Food Network's Guy Fieri was front row at the Slam Dunk Contest, completely locked in; his energy matched the arena's. The whole weekend had that quality: people who genuinely wanted to be there, not just seen there.
Access like this doesn't come often. When it does, the job is to be invisible enough that the moments happen naturally, and skilled enough that you're ready when they do. The 2025 All-Star Game delivered everything: the athletes, the spectacle, the energy. The only thing left was not to waste it.
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