Focus Locus Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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lhryshko wrote:
Focus Locus, who is extremely gym savvy, sees great merit in this vantage point but I don't get them.
Finding nuanced shot opportunities to help Xcel gymnasts look "excellent" is the appeal. For a collegiate level gymnast who wouldn't even be competing in the program were he or she not capable of executing a skill that would yield a better photo, no, I agree, these shots can be cut when compared to other shots more consistent with what we expect.
However, we simply can't get straight legs, pointed toes, big air, or graceful lines out of awkward, untrained, ungainly, but still courageously competing kids... who only participate in the sport on a very part time basis. Xcel gymnasts are similar to what you might encounter at the local recreation and parks department program, where gymnastics is merely a three day a week substitute for PE, not a three+ hour a day training regimen following the structure of the JR Olympic program.
We have all seen great gymnastics photos... not just as gymnastics photographers, not just as photographers, not just as parents... but as people in the public at large. Those media promogulated photos of Olympic events have conditioned our minds and expectations of what the sport "should" look like. And the young minds of recreational gymnasts are just as conditioned. So are the minds of their parents... and those are the minds my photos must ultimately please (in order to be paid for the work).
So when Russ busts out with a frame that I always miss because I am conditioned to shoot the aerial, not the moment before the aerial, I think oh yeah... this is the moment where the gymnast hasn't fudged it up yet. This still frame adequately documents the COURAGE to TRY, not the dismal failure that followed.
Most televised gymnastics meets are podium events, where the apparatus is elevated about a meter or so above the actual floor. So getting down low, as Russ does at beam, gives the subconsciously conditioned mind a mirror match of the "look" that we are all accustomed to seeing in the magazines (because those images are of podium events).
Bottom line... making awkward kids look like Olympians, capturing their courage, finding clean frames of preparation when there are no usable frames of their performance... that is my duty as a photographer of the everyday kid who is not really a gymnast, but who is just as dutifully and boldly taking that risk on the beam anyway.
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