Swim competition photography

Zach, San Juan Hills H.S., San Juan Capistrano, July, 2016 copyright Douglas Stockdale

Last weekend I attended Zach’s swim meet and I continue to be vexed on how to capture good photographs of the swimmers, because if they are swimming well, you do not see much of their faces unless it’s the breast stroke, then all you capture is huge open gaping mouths as they come up to grab some air.

Thus, I deferred to some environmental portraits, such as this one above. I am tempted to name this “The calm in the Midst of Chaos”. I set up the 200mm on the Canon5D at the opposite side of the pool finding a unobstructed spot between two of the coaches tables. Then I made multiple exposures and captured this pause in the action with his meditative gaze at the pool, which was his first 200 meter event. I like that he is so every lightly touching the starting platform as to ground himself, and in the background are all of the swimmers and others moving about. It did not help that while he was in line waiting for his turn, his google strap broke and he had to quickly high-tail it back to his swim gear and obtain his back-up training googles.

So I’m actually pretty happy about this photograph.

Cheers!