This Sunday my daughter competed in her first gym meet. She tied for 3rd place in the Rope Routine and missed a medal in the Floor Routine by 1/10 of a point. Any tips on improving would be helpful seeing as her next meet is in February.
without some samples of what you got, it is hard to give advice on improving. Gear wise, fast glass and a camera body that can handle high ISO's are typically a must in many of the dark gyms used.
pjbuehner wrote:
without some samples of what you got, it is hard to give advice on improving. Gear wise, fast glass and a camera body that can handle high ISO's are typically a must in many of the dark gyms used.
Thanks, I was having trouble getting the images uploaded. I think they can be seen now.
That background strip of dark vs whatever-lightish-red is a really tough problem. It causes disturbing issues for the background, which you did a pretty good job in overcoming. But the last three suffer from this line slicing through the top of her head.
I guess my advice would be to be watching the background at all times (see that other girl exactly behind her in the 2nd image, which I love otherwise). And make sure you have focus on the eyes. The second-to-last seems to miss the eyes.
I offer my critiques knowing these shots are really quite nice. And congrats on having such a lovely daughter!
Thanks Billk55. I've been reading thread and looking at the pics others post and was intimidated about posting, but the only way to get better is to have the experts critique and offer suggestions.
Thanks again for the compliment on my mini-me, but I'm sure everyone knows she has the looks in the family.
In my view, the benefit of shooting your daughter and doing so repeatedly is that you can learn her routine to the point where you can breath it. This should help you quite a bit with getting shots that capture the best portions of the routine. Look for the most beautiful poses, the most graceful movements, and peak activity. Not all will end up as great shots, but not bothering to shoot during the brief portions that won't ever lead to nice photos will go a long way toward improving your keeper rate. These look nice, and as already noted, backgrounds are important. You could crop that first shot to eliminate all but the black curtain background.
Keep at it and keep posting, and welcome to the Sports Corner.
These look pretty good. Can you post what settings you were using. Looks as though you had some decent light to work with.
Either way its a great start, #4 has a little motion blur, but they look good. More action would be great but I'm sure with her learning as well as you it will all get better!
Geoffrey, the light was pretty good. I mostly shot at 1/320-1/500, f/2.8-f/3.2 and ISO between 2000-4000. All in all I had fun and so did she, so I'm hoping to see improvement as the season goes on.
I added another pic I played with for a few secs using the tone curve and bumping up the sharpness some. Let me know if I'm headed in the right direction.
Great job Ed and welcome to the small but loyal clan of gymnastics shooters. Lots of great advice to be had here. Just in case you haven't seen the post below, it's an indication of where you're heading. Rhythmic is a beautiful sport to watch and photograph. Congrats to your daughter as well!
Looking forward to your February post.
lhryshko wrote:
Great job Ed and welcome to the small but loyal clan of gymnastics shooters. Lots of great advice to be had here. Just in case you haven't seen the post below, it's an indication of where you're heading. Rhythmic is a beautiful sport to watch and photograph. Congrats to your daughter as well!
Looking forward to your February post.
Thanks for the link Larry. That was pretty impressive shooting. Hopefully I can capture some better action in her next meet. The good thing in my case is that the rest of the family thinks the pics are okay because they have not been on FM to see the great stuff this gang can produce.
I really like the composition of the first picture! I do believe that you can work a bit on the color correction to remove that slight haze in the pictures and make them sharper
sozypozy wrote:
I really like the composition of the first picture! I do believe that you can work a bit on the color correction to remove that slight haze in the pictures and make them sharper
Correct Sozypozy. After it was pointed out yesterday, I fixed them on my home computer.
