Mitey Mite Ski Racing from yesterday

[Mike J]

Here are some of the better shots (out of the 250+) from a Mitey Mite race (6-12 year olds) held on Mt. Hood yesterday. Since I was not working the race and did not feel like shelling out for a pass, I decided to try to get photos of all of the kids on the race team my kids are a part of.

The race was at Skibowl and was a dual slalom event held on Mt. Hood Lane. The dual slalom is always fun as it really fires the kids up.

I do have a technical question though...any insight/advice would be appreciated.

Metering: I started off shooting in matrix mode on my D80. I added +1 ev comp to compensate for all of the snow. This worked fine as long as the frame consisted of mostly snow. If I tried to follow a racer through a series of gates, the background would change from mostly snow to half snow and half trees. When the frame had a lot of trees, the +1 was blowing the highlights. Spot metering had similar results. Rather than risking the blown highlights, I dialed out the +1 ev comp. This meant that the mostly snow shots were underexposed by a stop by the shots that had a mixture were correctly exposed. In the end, this meant that I had to look at all 250+ photos and tweak the exposure on each in LR.

Question: do you tend to fix on a gate and always shot there or do you try to follow a racer?

Focusing: Again, it was much easier to insure that shots were in focus if I just fixed on a gate. If I tried to follow a racer, sometimes the focus would be on the racer and sometimes on the trees behind or an a break in the snow. This was really a function of my inexperience in keeping the selected focus area on the racer.

Question: what focus settings do you use? Any other C&C would be appreciated.

Here they are...

#1 This is one of the J6 boys (7-8 year olds)

http://thejulianafamily.smugmug.com/photos/462623716_zn6Ai-L.jpg

#2 I had to sneak this one. This one is my youngest son.

http://thejulianafamily.smugmug.com/photos/462624043_inNe6-L.jpg

#3 I think this one is my favorite of all 250+. It has him in focus, you can see his eyes, and he is making a very nice turn. By the way, he is 12.

http://thejulianafamily.smugmug.com/photos/462624347_6yXLJ-L.jpg

#4 Another 12-year old racer. I like this one because if you look just to the side of his right knee, you can see the bent blue pole that he cross-blocked to the ground.

http://thejulianafamily.smugmug.com/photos/462625114_fij5Y-L.jpg

#5 One of the 8-year old girls. She finished in 5th place.

http://thejulianafamily.smugmug.com/photos/462624712_CBEE9-L.jpg

[johng]

Mike - some nice shots. 3rd is by far the best for the reasons you articulated. My personal preference would be for tighter framing. IMO the current gate is enough context - showing prior gates doesn't really add to the image much - I would much rather see better detail on the individual skier than the background gates. But the important thing is - it has to be in-camera framing, not cropping after the fact. You can't frame loose and expect to crop down to detail. If you want the detail you have to frame tightly to begin with.

This also solves most of your metering woes. The tighter framing will fill more of the frame with your subject so as long as you use a mode that gives the most weight to the center of the image you shouldn't get the fluctuations. Having said that - if you want to shoot looser, I would suggest shooting with a manual exposure which should solve your problem as long as none of the gates are in the shade.

Sadly I don't shoot the sport so I can't give you advice on following vs. sitting on a particular gate. All I will say is you should stick with gates within the limits of your lens so you're able to frame tightly in camera. For example, when I shoot hurdles I won't shoot them going over every hurdle - just the ones where I can frame tightly. I'll sit with my focus on the first such hurdle and acquire the runner as they approach it. Then I'll track the runner over the next several. I don't like to just sit on one hurdle because so much of the shot depends on how the person looks going over. So you could do everything correct and the body just looks akward. I would expect the same is true here. And I wouldn't think the gates are good enough focus targets that you could lock on to one, take the shot as the skier goes through and then lock on to the next gate.

One last thought - don't lose out on the shots when they get close - if they're too close for full body, take torso shots - if you get a quality expression you'll have lots of detail and it could be a real keeper.

[Mike J]

Thanks for the comments...

Mike - You can't frame loose and expect to crop down to detail. If you want the detail you have to frame tightly to begin with.
Learned that lesson on these. Most were pretty loosely framed with significant cropping in post. I think they were framed loosley because I was trying to follow the racer so next time I think I will "sit" on a gate or two with tighter framing. As you mentioned, this will help with the metering problems as well.
I'll sit with my focus on the first such hurdle and acquire the runner as they approach it. Then I'll track the runner over the next several.

Are you changing your zoom at the same time?

One last thought - don't lose out on the shots when they get close - if they're too close for full body, take torso shots - if you get a quality expression you'll have lots of detail and it could be a real keeper.

I'll have to try these to see if this works for skiing. One of the things that the kids like to see is how well they are edging their skis and the position of their lower body.

Thanks again for the comments. I'm looking forward to standing in the snow for another 5 hours to get some more practice!