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Aug 23rd 2010 04:10

Since I haven't been shooting anything this weekend as well, I was deciding what to pick up from my archive. This time I went really deep - featured event is from March 2007. And it's a special one I think - at least for me. It's the very first Junior Team Cup I have visited.

The pictures are taken with good old Nikon D2H camera. First Nikon's dSLR able to take 8 frames per second. Back in 2003, when its 4 Mpx sensor was made, the technology was still in early development, so when using ISO above 800, the noise was quite visible. Also, the camera had problems with artificial light, so I remember spending a lot of time decreasing image noise and manually adjusting color curves of each image. Yeah - I am really happy these times are behind me now.
Anyway, I dealt with it by using batch processing auto-color enhancement software this time. The results are not ideal, however way better than originals. Just to make myself clear - I never do any of these enhancements to my images since I have switched to Canon. First, pictures actually come the way I like them straight from the camera, but more importantly second, adding contrast destroys soft color transitions, which I very much like.

Anyway, even these pictures may not be technically very good, they have certain historical value. And that's because of one cool aspect of covering youth sport events - the athletes actually change in time... So it may be quite interesting to compare present with the past. Let's go and check it out then!

before, now. Hmmm, no change here.
before, now. Oh, not even here.
before, now. You got to be kidding me...

Oops, it seems I got it all wrong... Looks like they never do really change, after all.

:-)

		Junior Team Cup - training Mar 16th 2007

		Junior Team Cup - competition Mar 17th 2007

Wait, is it really 4:10 in the morning??!

Aug 16th 2010 10:25

Hi! Again, today I publish something from an archive. It's one and half year old Freestyle Wrestling Championship of youth and juniors.

It took a lot of time to sort the pictures out, since this gallery had about 6000 pictures initially. Still, more than 3000 remain. Although from photographic view there's no really point in publishing so many pictures, I have been told the wrestlers like it and they even like the sequences of moves. So here you go.

For others, you can view either selection of best pics, or I can pinpoint out some intersting stuff. Like this match or this match (starting with picture 4410). With these I always regret I haven't been taping it on my video camera.

Also, since browsing this large galleries by page of 20 thumbnails definitely sucks, I added an option to change it to 48, 100 and 200 thumbnails per page. And if that's not enough for you, you can even rewrite value of parameter 'limit' in the URL of your browser to any value that suits you. Yeah, I should have done that long time ago... Enjoy!

Aug 14th 2010 22:45

Slaloms in Benatky - that's a white water slalom competition, held every year in city called Benatky upon Jizera. Although it's not an important competition, neither it has a difficult track, it's one of my most favorite. And that's because this place has an atmosphere like none other. People having fun, kids playing around, you can get home made goulash on real ceramic plate and tea in real ceramic cup there. No plastic shit. The environment is beautiful wild nature in little valley, with old deteriorated cottages at the opposite waterside, half lost between old trees. The place is usually loaded with tents, boats, clothes and people. Everything seems like you got 20 or 30 years back in time. It's wild, natural, beautiful... One feels real free in there, can tell you that. Like I said - it's a magic place.

Last time I was there in 2007, so it's been a long break. That's why I made damn sure I wouldn't miss it this year. I even wanted to stay the entire weekend, which is a luxury I can afford only few times a year. However, things are never ideal...

It's been raining a lot past few days, which obviously means higher flow in the rivers. Long story short - when I got at the place I realized the water level is about 2 meters above normal, effectively covering my favorite background stones, shooting spots and entire track character is changed. Also, it looked like only about half people arrived, so the place looked sort of empty. So no great shooting today. Damn it! That's life I guess...

Slaloms in Benatky Preview
Aug 14th, BENATKY upon JIZERA

Aug 2nd 2010 12:15

Tábor Triathlon Preview
Aug 1st, TABOR

Jul 16th 2010 23:15

The summer holidays have started and most athletes are resting from competitive season. Even I am happy to have a little break. When was the last time I had two free weekends in a row? Can't even remember...

But this was an opportunity to process some older, unpublished event. Eventually I chose the Tabor Triathlon from last year. Since I didn't want to spend too much time with sorting, I just put away the images, which were out of focus and I leave it up to you to dig through the rest :-)

Actually, you can take this as an invitation for this year's event - coming up in two weeks already. And this time it will be big - it's going to be an European Junior Cup, as well as Czech Championship. I sure won't miss it!

Jul 6th 2010 23:35

About a week ago, the next year of a Triathlon in Pocernice took a place in Prague. Since I got really nice results last year, I was looking forward this year as well. However, a diametric change in weather, event structure and my unprepareness resulted in something I am not so proud of. I even hesitated to make a preview gallery out of it, but since there wasn't an update for some time...

Last year it was cloudy, so I didn't have to bother with the sun, shining directly against me, as well as with presence of gaps of extreme light and darkness along the running track. Automatic exposure metering is not quite reliable in this situation and manual can cover only one set of circumstances. So many shots were wasted thanks to this. Also, a meter high reeds have grown on the dike since last year, making pre-start and start pictures very difficult to take. And let's not forget a change in start harmonogram, so one couldn't have effectively photograph all the age categories. Next problem was total change of track for the youngest category, so when I was starting to guess something might be wrong, thay were almost in the finish. But sure that was my fault - I should have checked the event plan. However it never happened before, so it took me by total surprise. Last nail to quality photography coffin were interval group starts of the adults, so they weren't starting/swimming/running in a huge crowd.

Therefore resulting preview gallery is everything but 'balanced', so to speak. However, here it is.

Triathlon in Pocernice Preview
Jun 27th, PRAGUE

Jun 20th 2010 18:55

Looks like I haven't published two previews at the same moment so far, but everything happens for the first time. Both are swimming events, and both even happened at the same place - swimming areal Prague - Podoli. Only the first one took the place in open-air, while the second one in indoor pool.

And it was quite a fight for me in both cases, because the place of the outdoor pool is always very tight and it's very difficult to take my favorite snapshots, while indoor environment is quite dark, where my autofocus doesn't perform very well. In summary, I am not really satisfied with results, looks like I have to work a lot on my photography yet.

Praha 2010 Preview
Jun 6th, PRAGUE

Summer Czech Republic Swimming Championship of Older Youth Preview
Jun 19th, PRAGUE

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