A long shot
February 21, 2008
My name is Maxwell Kruger. I photographed this gymnastics meet on Feb. 2.
Heather McElwee performs on the uneven bars at the gymnastics meet this Saturday.
I think gymnastics is one of the most difficult sports to shoot for several reasons: The lighting is very dim, the athletes are moving very quickly in very awkward directions and positions, and they are performing very close to distracting backgrounds.
I thought that I would try something different this time and take a very long lens, a 300mm f/2.8, typically only used for outdoor sports like football where the players are very far away. This lens is good because it can blur out the backgrounds really well to increase the emphasis on the gymnast and it can fill the frame with the subject really well.
It's very awkward shooting with such a long lens because you have to be very far away from the subjects to fit them into the frame. In this case, I had to be up against the back walls of the stadium at all times so that I could fit the gymnasts into the picture.
This particular shot was very difficult to capture because during the uneven bars, the gymnasts move very rapidly once they reach the top of the bar. To get this shot, I pre-focused on the bar and framed the shot where the pictured gymnast would be at the top of her swing. When she started her loop around the bar, I held down the trigger on my camera, the Nikon D300, to capture 10 or 12 frames in a row of her swinging.
This particular shot turned out the best and captured her right at the peak of her swing. It's particularly interesting to me because it's a very awkward position to freeze and the background is very clean, producing a very neat, focused and interesting photograph.