Wordless Wednesday - Everybody in the Pool!

One of the benefits of senior citizenship in our town is that seniors get free all sports passes to the high school sports...all of the sports! I was at the local community center on Monday and saw a sign that said the pool would be closed on Thursday afternoon because of a high school swim meet. I'm thinking, I've never photographed a swim meet. So I gathered up my gear and headed to the pool on Thursday afternoon. The place was very busy as there were several schools participating.

The first thing I needed to find out was where to position myself to get the best images. Answer, different places for different events. For the start of any race you need to be forward of those starting platforms. It's not much different than a track meet.

Any photography of people is better when you can see their face. So, for freestyle you want to be on the side of the pool. If you have a particular swimmer you want to photograph, then you need to know which strokes they breath on so you are on the correct side to see their face. Some of these kids only come up for air a couple of times per lap, so you have to know when that's going to happen. I just got lucky here.

The breast stroke may be the most passive looking event because there doesn't appear to be much water movement. Here, you want to be at the end of the pool, so the swimmer is coming at you.

You can stay at the end of the pool for the backstroke and wait until the simmer is moving away from you. Again, I got lucky because the arm in motion does not block the swimmer's face. It helps if your camera has a continuous shooting mode. Mine will shoot 7 frames per second when set correctly. I have six bad images of this swimmer and this good one. One is all you need, right?

Like the breaststroke, the butterfly is best photographed if the swimmer is coming toward the camera. I think it is the hardest image to capture correctly and I missed the right moment in both of these. There is a point when the head is up and the arms are out of the water. It happens somewhere between these two images. I learned one more thing. I'm going to do this again. I love shooting sports and I love the challenge of capturing the right moment in time. I had a couple of wins and a couple of losses today. There's always next time. Have a blessed day.