I apologize for the time since my last entry. I have been wasting my days daydreaming. Besides, the overcast & chilly weather as of late has not been inspirational. Weather-wise I had an OK day yesterday. Got some things taken care of in the morning before packing up my cameras and heading to my daughter’s school for another track meet.

Witnessed another display of a poor winner. Again it was from one of our athletes. For those wanting more details, I won’t be sharing any, so please don’t ask. This unfortunate display happened on the track, in full view of anyone watching the finish of a race, and was magnified tremendously as a result unlike the incident from my previous blog entry that occurred after the race.

I was standing some 4 or 5 feet away from the guilty party when, like a flash of lightning, one of the track coaches pounced. Coach made it perfectly clear that the behavior would not be tolerated and if it occurred again, Buffett would have one less member on their track team. Coach also made it clear that Buffett students and athletes don’t embarrass themselves or their school.

It took everything I had to not shout, “BRAVO, COACH!” and give him a high five. Thought that might be a bit much. But I still wanted to do it. It was refreshing to see a coach hold the race winner accountable for their boorish behavior. With much sarcasm I say, “Gosh, I hope coach didn’t destroy this precious child’s self esteem. The tender child may suffer irreparable damage. I certainly hope that does not happen.“.

Moving along…

Still far from being entirely comfortable photographing track & field and I’m not achieving the number of keeper shots I would like. I am making improvements, though. I have been studying some of the top sports photogs lately and trying to take away nuggets of wisdom that I can use to improve. It’s great to have the knowledge but it’s what you capture with your camera that matters.

Relatively pleased with this image of a high jumper as she starts her ascent over the bar. Really love the way she is watching the bar as she leaps. This jumper has really good form and could be great with proper coaching and practice.

I was front and center, just off the track, when I experienced what was the most exciting race of the meet. The two girls in this image are locked in an outright battle to see who will cross the finish line first. The crowd was really excited and screaming as they dueled. Really cool to see their competitive side. Much cooler to see the two really good friends leave their rivalry on the track. One of the young ladies had her legs kind of buckle as she finished and could have hurt herself. Her fierce competitor was the first to make sure she was alright. They hugged and relished the competition. No bad feelings. No unfortunate displays. Just good sportsmanship. Here’s the image:

NOTE: Image taken from an ancient Nikon D100 sitting on a tripod track-side that I randomly fired via a remote control unit. Was shocked to see image at end of day because I was firing shutter blindly. At start of the track meet, I set the ISO, aperture and shutter speed and never checked what I was capturing during track meet.

During one of the distance races, I was goofing around and decided to set the camera’s shutter speed pretty slow and just fire the shutter whenever someone ran by. Lined up my camera with a mom and her children and this is what I got:

I have been doing some experimenting in image processing lately. Just trying out some different things to see what works and what doesn’t. I really like the look and feel of this image I took of one of my daughter’s friends as she ran. Kind of an old-timey, kind of faded, kind of black & white-ish image. Let me know what you, the readers of my humble blog, think by adding a comment.