Photo of the Day – Parkour Jump
While walking late one morning in Castlefield, I happened across some guys practicing parkour on the steps leading down to the canals near Liverpool Road.
I happened to be carrying a Nikon D3 and its nine-frames-per-second glory. A perfect (and lucky) match.
I got to talking with them and they were happy to have me do a few shots while they practiced their moves. They were rehearsing for a short movie one of them was making in which I eventually had a role. If you ask me, I nailed the role of “Man on Bench” and I was robbed when I received no awards.
But I digress…
I had never really seen anything like this in person before let alone photographed it, so I was in foreign territory. Looking back on it, there are a number of different ways I could have approached the situation, but I do find this method interesting.
Click to see a larger version on flickr:
The largest version is here.
With those nine frames per second blazing through the D3, I opted to follow the progress of this jumper without a tripod. I thought it might convey not only his movement, but also his movement within the environment. I’ve seen a lot of sequence shots with a stationary camera, but not as many where the camera is allowed to track the subject. I think either way could have worked and I probably would have played with both methods given the time and a more formal setting.
Putting this together in Photoshop is just a matter of getting all the individual photos onto layers, positioning them roughly and then masking off the bits you want to keep or discard from each layer.
The Biggest Man on the Field
Sports photographer Thomas E. Witte’s Sports Shooter article about his experiences shooting Bobby Martin, a legless high-school football player in Ohio, is worth a read both for its human interest side and for its photo business side.
Witte explores the challenges of paying due respect to his extraordinary subject and then dealing with the flood of suitors for his photos after they appeared in Sports Illustrated. His conclusion leaves us with the following advice:
At the moment of writing this, the combined resales of what I sold and my split from SI Picture Sales total a few bucks shy of twelve grand… for a photo from a high school football game. If that’s not reason enough to maintain your copyright, I don’t know what is.
SI’s Most Interesting Pictures 2006
Sports Illustrated has a great collection of their most interesting images of 2006. Check it out for some excellent sports photography.
World Cup Photographers’ Blog
Photographers of Getty Images have been busy at the World Cup and have been posting their photos and experiences on the Getty Images Sports Blog. The page provides some interesting insight into what it’s like to shoot such a major event and also features the occasional useful tip from some of the better sports photographers in the world.
Darby Sawchuk is a Canadian-born photographer who currently resides in Manchester, England. He has travelled to over 40 countries and is always adding more to the list. He creates stock for multiple agencies and is available for assignments.
+44 0790 992 8932
