New Cheer season is underway....

Rocketman766

Shot my first cheer event of the new season this past weekend. I wasn't 100% satisfied with the results, so I have a long way to go still. The lighting was, well... indoor gymnasium lighting. Terrible. I did the best I could, so as always, C&C welcome. It was my first event with all new equipment. Shot everything with a 1D MKIII and a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 USM (non IS). I think the shots came out really soft. I am sure most of it is my fault, not the equipments. ( I am going to test this weekend for any needed microadjustments). I have a couple more to shoot this year in a gymnasium, one of the events is in the very same gym.
I also tried my hand at onsite viewing/sales/printing. This went OK, but not great. As far as viewing, that went great. We were able to get the shots on the screens within minutes of the teams coming off the floor. Sales were ok, could have been worse, but the printing completely failed, mostly my fault again. Long story... but my fault. Lessons were learned, many more to learn as I go. Now for the shots....all shot in AV mode.

ISO 3200, f/2.8 ss 1/250


ISO 2500, f/2.8 ss 1/320



ISO 2500, f/2.8 ss 1/500



ISO 3200, f/3.5 1/250 framing was way off on this one....

GP Images

#1 and #3 I like. #2 I would have tossed, because of the odd looking position of the girls hands behind the main subject.
Glynn

mntentman

GP Images wrote:

#1 and #3 I like. #2 I would have tossed, because of the odd looking position of the girls hands behind the main subject.
Glynn

Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time judging with so many watermarks.

ARKreations

mntentman wrote:

Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time judging with so many watermarks.

It's not just you - they are quite distracting.

Aside from that, every shot has a hand or foot cropped outside the frame or blurry. And with the tight composition, there's almost no way of printing anything other than the original aspect ratio. (Forget about an 8x10).

I think you need to concentrate on not shooting quite so tight and freezing the action better. Having shot a lot of dance, I realize that's not always as easy as it sounds. I would also recommend to keep shooting until you get consistently solid images before venturing into on-site event sales - that can be another whole nightmare unto itself...

Rocketman766

Thanks for the feedback. I will reduce the watermarks a bit.. just got tired of all the cheer parents snagging them. I know it still happens, but now they don't print them (as often). At least one parent has told me they no longer do becuase of all the words, she didn't know it was my site.

I knew when I put these up that I cut off too many hands and feet, that was one of the first things I told myself to NOT do. I'm working on the OOF and overall blurriness. I have another competition this weekend where I can practice more. I am hoping the lighting is better so I can shoot at a lower ISO, but I really doubt that it will be any better.

Any suggestions on how to fix these problems? I did have alot of shots where I did not cut off feet or hands, but I didn't want to post only the best shots.

Rocketman766

Ok, here are a few from 2 weeks ago. I was in the stands for this one, so I didn't get the best angles. Just going to post a couple here, I tried to work on NOT cutting off hands and feet this time... these are uncropped, just converted to jpg. I know the last one is too dark, but can be fixed in PP..... still a work in progress.