9,500 Gymnastics Pictures
February 9th and 10th I traveled north to Easley, South Carolina for the 2008 Palmetto Invitational. More than 250 female gymnasts came to Easley to compete at all levels.
Gymnastics is especially challenging because the gyms involved are usually not well lit, and the action moves especially fast – so a high shutter speed is needed. I also expected to be limited in shooting position, trying both to frame my subjects as tightly as possible and trying to limit the visibility of backgrounds in my images.
For this reason, I visited Professional Photographic Resources in Atlanta and rented a 100/f2 for the weekend. This lens is pretty similar to their 85/1.8 in terms of design and performance. It also provided me a fairly broad area that I could capture full length shots in, while the wide aperture let a lot of light in and also was fairly effective at blurring the distractions in the background. In order to cover all gymnasts, I stayed with floor the entire weekend.
My most successful shots were the “flight” elements of the routines. These usually provided good faces and peak action.
The floor elements showcased more of the artistic side of gymnastics.
Occasionally – you catch lighting in a bottle, so to speak and the spotty lighting works out to an artistic effect. Here the gymnast is just under one of the overhead lights and when she looks up, her face is highlighted.
The total take? More the 9500 images, edited to about 5000 presented for sale.
Easley Gymnastics Team and Individual Session
The Spartans run at the AA State Title expired Friday night against Cook County at Spartan Stadium. Cook, which entered the playoffs as the #4 from their region, defeated the Spartans 34-21.
It was a beautiful night for football. After a warm day, the sun set well before the game.
The Spartans’ parents help add a little bit Hollywood to the player run on during the pregame with smoke machines and streamer launchers.
Senior Ben Donald was again handed the ball in the backfield.
I’ve been trying to catch this play all season and this was the best I got. A second quarter Spartans touchdown.
The Spartans defense came strong all evening. In the second half the Spartans blocked a Cook extra point to help keep it close.
In the fourth quarter, Christian Robinson blocked and recovered a Cook punt for a touchdown to bring the Spartans closer. The punter was deep in his own end zone, which is always a dangerous situation. Good positioning as a photographer helps catch this play at the peak.
Coach Chupp spoke to the team after the game to console them in the loss. I dialed down the power on the flash here and used more of the ambient light, just using the flash to reduce some shadows.
I traveled Saturday, to Easley, South Carolina to the Easley Gymnastics Training Center for a team and individual photo session.
The average team and individual photo shoot has the potential to be pretty mechanical and like a production line – one team member after another. This wasn’t the case here.
There were several challenges to confront. In any indoor sports environment at the lower levels, you will usually find poor lighting. In gymnastics training centers, there are also usually many pieces of equipment close together and a lot going on at any time during a training day.
One of the central rules of photography is to make sure the subject of your photograph is clear. If you can’t quickly decide who the subject is, then you have lost. There are several ways a photographer can do this – commonly with sports I use depth of field (an infocus subject against a blurred background). Saturday I allowed the light to be my differentiation point.
This frame was taken within five feet of another balance beam behind it, and more apparatus behind it. It was taken with the lights on in the gym, and minimal post-processing performed.
I used a pair of Alien Bee 800 strobes to light the photo. From the subject’s front, one strobe was set at just above head-level with a twenty degree grid on it. The grid acts to help focus and constrain the grid to a twenty degree spread. It was placed at the front of the balance beam – only a couple feet away.
The second strobe I used served to reduce shadows. I used a sixty inch Eclipse shoot-through umbrella to help reduce the shadows. The lighting on the subject’s hand and leg came from the second light exclusively.
In the end, it yields a dramatic result and also completely removes the background distractions.
