More Utah Gymnastics

Utah has only 5 home meets this year.  After last night's competition against Cal, only two more meets to go.  Sigh.  Photographing gymnastics is a lot of work and more challenging than any other sport I shoot.  Take NBA, for example.  The ball comes up the court, then goes back the other way, then up and back, etc., probably 100 times a game.  Probably more.  Lots of opportunities to photograph all sorts of great action.  It's easy to miss the unexpected, but even that is likely to come around again given that there are about 40 home games to shoot.  And with NBA, I've got my spot to shoot from and that's it.  No reason to be thinking about what other angles I might try (barring use of a remote, and I haven't gone there yet).  Compare that to gymnastics.  5 meets.  Each athlete competing on each rotation completes a routine that lasts between 3 seconds (vault if you don't count the run) to maybe 3 minutes (floor).  Opportunities for great shots are much more easily missed than I or anyone photographing the sport ever could be happy about.  On the plus side, there are good options for where to shoot from for each event, but in a way that only serves to increase the pressure in that it leads to the sense that, a) it should be possible to nail the "perfect" shot, and b) there's no reason to ever take the same shot twice across multiple meets.  Also, no matter how good any one shooting location might be, that will only be true for the part of the routine when the athlete is facing you, which at best is likely to be half the time.

Okay, enough complaining.  The truth is, there isn't anything more exciting than photographing gymnastics, and as far as I'm concerned, there isn't any other sport with the same potential for providing such stunning images of strength, beauty, power and grace.  So it's the tremendous potential that motivates my gymnastics photography, along with the great honor of photographing one of the most storied and successful NCAA gymnastics programs in the country.  I photograph these meets for the University of Utah, so I don't have much reason to put my photos out there.  That's where this blog comes into play.  I thought I'd post some images from last night's meet, just for fun.  These athletes are off-the-charts talented.  My job is to do them justice through my photos.  Let 'er rip (click on an image for a larger view)...