I now have yet another YMCA of CNY Green Lakes Triathlon under my belt and this event serves as a reminder to not take the thing you love and make a job out of it.
As was the case for the last few races, I was tasked with photographing racers as they exited the water and when the crossed the finish line. Both are photographically boring.
When capturing folks getting out of the water, I use the 14-150mm and back-button focus on the line between the sand and the water. This year, I was capturing most images at 45mm (90mm FFeq) at aperture priority (-0.7 stop compensation for the highlights while exposing for the entirety of the frame) and there was plenty of light for me to not concern myself with shutter speed even at f/8.0 (to give me wiggle-room with depth of field). As the racers exited the water, I simply framed them and clicked the shutter. Not every capture is perfect, but there can be no such expectation (regardless of approach) when a large number of people are funneled through a narrow space.
As I did last time, I set the camera up on a tripod a off-center to the right so that the sun wasn’t too overpowering (the background is mostly shaded from this angle) and so that I could capture multiple athletes crossing the line in series without the first athlete across obstructing my view of the next runner coming through. I chose to use the Meike 25mm manual focus, because the camera could move in/out of sleep mode (there are VERY long gaps between finishers) without losing my focus. The camera was in the sun, so I shielded it with a white ball cap to keep it from getting too warm (not sure if that was a legit concern or not, frankly).
The most enjoyable part of the day was the preparation/staging when I was able to capture environmental and candid images. As was the case last week, I was increasingly comfortable approaching people with the Meike pre-focused at f/8.0, and while it isn’t the best lens and it is mounted on an increasingly older camera, it does the job well enough and I was happy with some of the images. None of them were great, but at least the first 90 minutes of the morning was fun.
