Gymnastics is notorious for being one of the most difficult sports to shoot. Not only are the athletes flipping their bodies around quickly, but photographers generally aren’t allowed to use flash to brighten up the gyms. The training gym I shot in this past week was actually darker than most high school gyms, so I took my wide aperture prime lenses and shot at the highest ISO possible for my camera in order to freeze the action. Unfortunately the window you see at the far left of the frame provided no help for bars or beam.

I took a few frames of my subject, in this case it is the girl in the middle doing the back handspring, working out on bars, but it was way too dark to stop the action. I hung around until she moved to beam. I liked that all the girls were spread out practicing on different beams, so I used my 28mm f1.8 lens at 1600 ISO. It was the widest of the fast prime lenses that I have. In case you’re interested, the other lens I used was the 85mm f1.8. Our pool 200mm f1.8 lens is still at Canon. Apparently someone in the accounting department didn’t pay our bill, so CPS is holding our gear hostage, grr. Needless to say, it wasn’t available for use.

This was only a practice, so I didn’t have any restrictions as to where I could stand. I just needed to be in a spot where they couldn’t fall on me. There is still a bit of motion blur, but for newspaper work, it’ll be close enough to work. A considerable amount of Photoshop work went into toning this image. Not only did I use Noise Ninja to get rid of the splotchy grain, but I had to bring up the curves and levels to help with the exposure. Lastly, I converted to B&W to hide the crappy color of the sodium vapor lights. The athletes had a nice oompa loompa hue when it was in color.

CAPTION:
Recent DeSales graduate Nicole Ciminello does a back handspring on the beam while working out with teammates at Buckeye Gymnastics in Westerville on July 3. Ciminello, who finished second in the all-around at this year’s club state meet, will compete for Ohio State in the fall.