It was a pleasure to photograph the California State Games BMX competition held at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. This was (of course) not held on the Olympic track, but the smaller more “normal” sized BMX track. Participants ranged in age from about 10 years old up to old guys – with a few top international pros in the mix too. The only major crash of the day happened during warm-up when a broken fork caused an ugly looking spill – but fortunately the rider walked away with a smile on his face.
Becoming a Yoga instructor requires a huge commitment to the art. Fortunately for Corinna, her background in gymnastics provides a fantastic gateway into this field of work with incredible strength and flexibility already on her side.
Gymnastics events always have bad lighting for photographers to work in but this one took the cake – this was the worst lighting I have ever seen. For the photographers out there who know about camera settings these are taken at ISO 6400, F1.6, 1/400.
I would like to thank Timeless Images for having me come out to work with their team of photographers, editors and sales people. It was a truly professional operation over an exhausting 3 days of competition
As always – it was a super fun event to be part of and these girls put on a great show.
I had the privilege of photographing some action shots for the San Diego United Gymnastics team recently. These girls put on a very impressive display for me that made my job super easy. I can’t wait to work with them again next year.
I was invited by mplusm Photography to help photograph portraits for the gymnastics teams attending the National competition in San Diego. The photography team consisted or Mac, Diane, Juliana, Patrick and myself. We worked together to manage the flow of athletes, parents and coaches within the space that had been provided to us (and was far too small). Three long days later we had photographed hundreds of athletes from all across the country – and here’s a small sample of the resulting work.
I’ve been invited to photograph portraits and action shots for San Diego United Training Center gymnastics program. As expected, the girls put on an impressive display of acrobatics for me to photograph. Afterwords we put together this design layout to make a memorable image for the parents to purchase.
I shot the whole event exclusively with the Pentax K-7 this time – using the DA*16-50mm and DA*200mm lenses. The auto-focus on this camera continues to impress me with its accuracy – this time out I had 90% keepers.
The swell was from the south but the competition was on the north side of the pier … This was not the ideal situation for a great event but the athletes made the most of it with a great day of riding.
Well it turns out some images I had taken of Eric Carter have been making the rounds. I got a call from Kenda Tires today to get permission to use two of the images for the upcoming Interbike show in Vegas.
The first image will be used as an autograph card
Legends of the Sport - Eric Carter
This second image will be a 4 foot high banner next to Eric Carter’s own design of tire
Legends of the Sport - Eric Carter
Next up will be Dane Kuta’s run at the New York City Marathon
I got the new Pentax K-7 last week which means I’ve got some testing to do. You can’t just take a brand new piece of camera gear to a job and hope that it works – it needs some testing so you can figure out the strengths and weaknesses in a controlled environment.
The first thing I wanted to know was if Pentax had figured out the predictive AutoFocus. To do this I had Jamie take pictures of me as I went up and down this hill on my bike. I would sprint up to 20mph and then coast down towards her at that speed.
Predictive Focus
The results were excellent. Matched with a DA*200mm F2.8 lens the images came out razor sharp.
100% crop
Next I tested the low light capability of the camera. In overcast conditions I set up a tripod in the back yard and waited for the hummingbirds as I worked on a report on my laptop. These images were taken with an FA* 300mm F2.8 lens at 1/1000, F2.8 and ISO 1600
Humming Bird
Humming Bird
Finally the camera was ready to come out to its first job. I brought it along to a wedding as a “third” camera body because I was not willing to fully commit it to a wedding without getting to know it a little better. I used a wide angle 12-24mm F4 lens on the camera and used it only for a few shots but it performed very well under some exceptionally harsh lighting conditions.
