NAKGEELA.comAthletics Photography

Just to prove that it is worth asking retailers for their best price - I purchased a 4GB Sandisk card today in the New Oxford Street branch of Jacobs Digital Photo & Video in London. The sales assistant, who is a fellow sports photographer, did a price match with www.warehouseexpress.com which saved me £30.

The Sandisk Ultra II card ranks well in the Compact Flash card performance database maintained by Rob Galbraith and is an excellent choice for use when shooting with cameras such as the Canon 10D in continuous mode. I have several Sandisk CF cards and have never had a single failure.

Steve Cram has written an interesting article in his column on the BBC website. He profiles four rising stars in UK Athletics that he believes will make their mark on the sport in 2006. One of the athletes mentioned is Emily Pidgeon. Read the entire entry »

Today I responded to a post on the Fred Miranda Sports Corner forum. The poster was asking for reviews of his portfolio prior to submitting it to Sportsshooter. One of the photographs is of a triple jumper which I felt suffered from two faults - a busy background and poor framing.

Other athletes and objects such as cones in the background of a photograph cause the eye of the viewer to be distracted from the object of the picture - the athlete. Yes, it is virtually impossible to get a completely clear background at an Athletics meeting, but it is worth changing shooting position and angle to try to minimise any background distractions. If you are using an SLR camera this could also be helped by increasing the aperture to give a narrower depth of field and (depending to some extent on the lens) better bokeh for the background which will ease the distraction.

Framing is a simpler issue - the picture is of a Triple Jumper but the pit is not in the shot and therefore, for me, some of the context of the event is lost.

I am in the process of adding RSS and TrackBack functionality. At present these are not working and will generate an error message if clicked on. Don’t worry - just use the Back button on your browser to return to the website.

Thank you for visiting my new website. Over the next few weeks I will be developing the layout and content further but all the galleries that were available on the old website are already loaded.

Please feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think of the new site. Comments will not show on the website immediately. This is to avoid automated spam comments being made.
Many thanks,

Richard

The fourth in the 2005/6 series of London City Runnner Metropolitan League races was held on Saturday at Verulamium Park in St. Albans. Eleven Thames Valley Harriers runners took part and this Flash presentation includes one photograph of each.

London City Runner Metropolitan League 7 January 2006