Picture of the week

An ethlete jumps off the blocks to start the relay race during a meet in The Dalles April 14. Copyright Mark B. Gibson/The Dalles Chronicle

Track and field is great fun to photograph, there is always plenty to shoot and at a high school home meet access is as intimate as you want it to be. It’s a great place to experiment with your gear, trying out various lenses and angles as well as focus and exposure modes. I was testing out a new camera (used Nikon D2Xs) and played even more then I normally do. You can also study and work with any aspect of motion as interpreted by the camera; motion frozen, motion blurred, motion up close or at a distance, motion building or at its peak. There is plenty of action, and more importantly that action is repeated over and over again as each individual competes.

This photograph is pretty straightforward. I shot several starts before I figured out how much space to leave around the runner: They are moving rapidly from a horizontal to a vertical posture, and my first attempts lopped off their arms and heads. A moderately long lens isolated the subject from the background, I pre-focused and at the gun fired off the motor drive. It was interesting to see the resulting sequence of events. I liked this moment, as the athlete just begins to pick up some speed. He appears full of concentrated energy, determination and forward momentum. It would be fun to shoot the same picture, perhaps cropped more tightly, at a slower shutter speed, camera panning with the motion.