Staying Fresh

Keeping our content fresh is something that we have moved to the top of the list as far as priorities go this year. This is something that all the web people tell me is critical to maintaining traffic on our web site. The concept goes a little further for us though, so while fresh content on our site is important, that fresh content itself also needs to be fresh. I know I wrote it and it doesn't even make sense, here's what I mean, we are hyper aware of the fact that sometimes it seems like we are getting the same shot, just at a different time or venue. I touched on this last week when I mentioned the new lens that I was experimenting with, the whole reason for trying out the lens was to get images that looked "fresh". I just deleted a few paragraphs so I could keep your attention and will shorten it to this. Our main goal at every event is to get as many great shots of as many gymnasts as possible, so this may mean seeing some of the "Staple" shots, but I want to assure you that directly after that goal now, is our new mission: To shoot more angles of more events, and take our experience out of the "safe" zone in an effort to continually improve the product that we provide for our customers. On a related note, I want to thank everyone for all of the great compliments and feedback and encourage you to continue to offer them, these are our best tools in developing our service. Click below to see this weeks picture "from the Favorites".

So the image I chose for today's "from the Favorites" is from "the pit". The floor level shots from the pit at Granite State are a lot of fun. The angle definitely provides a different point of view and can add a great deal of drama to a pose. This shot is a perfect example of that, from anywhere else in the gym this shot probably wouldn't have made the favorites pile. Shots like this remind me of the inspirational posters you see on the walls in the gym or at school. On that poster you would have a picture, and right below there would be one word. The reason it reminds me of those posters is not because of the shot itself but because, you could put "FOCUS" "POISE" "STRENGTH" "DISCIPLINE" or any number of other one word inspirations below this image and it would make sense. That's because of the gymnast, and has nothing to do with the guy behind the camera. 

If this is your gymnast send me an email and let me know and I'll send you a 5X7 print of the image. If you know who it is let them know they can get a free print.

This post was a little late coming out after the 7&8 sectional, I'll be getting to work on this weeks, and have it posted very soon. Thanks for reading and commenting.

Continue Reading "Staying Fresh" Here!

Cupids Invite

Cupid has wings, wings are for amateurs, gymnast don't need them. But maybe they named it the Cupid invitational because it was the weekend of Valentine's Day.
As long as I can remember I have loved watching gymnastics, and have always been respectful of the awe inspiring skill and determination the sport demands. As a spectator it is one of my favorite sports to watch. I remember as a kid watching "The Karate Kid" and afterwards I wanted to get off the couch and practice "The Crane Technique", gymnastics always has the same effect on me, I'm just recently old enough and out of shape enough to know I shouldn't be trying a back tuck.
So, add to this my love of photography and it's a near perfect marriage, made even better by my ability to provide a service that includes them both.

One of the things I'd like to use the blog for is answering questions from our customers. A friend of mine works at an answer desk and he suggested in his blog recently that if one person asks him a good question, chances are there are quite a few people out there that would like to know the answer to that same question, even if they hadn't thought to ask it yet.This weekend a parent asked, "Why don't you take pictures of the awards ceremony?" We have had this question a few times in the past so an answer here seemed like a good idea to kick off the Q&A portion of the Blog. The biggest reason we don't cover awards is because this is the time we use between sessions as a break, to grab some food and rest, or if it's the last session we are packing up so we can get back to the office and get the images uploaded as quick as possible.
GOOD NEWS we are considering the idea of covering awards for the state meet, if this is something you would be interested in please let us know, you can comment right here at the bottom of the blog, or send us an EMAIL.
As always, if you have any questions or if there is anything we can do to improve your experience with Champion Photo please let us know.

From the Favorites

This week I tried out a new lens (14mm-24mm) very wide angle of view, to try and offer a different point of view. I had a very specific idea in mind with trying this particular lens, but in the end we were not happy with the results during testing, and decided to use the lens for some unique shots during warm up only. I originally hoped that one of those would end up here but very few of them made it to the favorites pile and there were plenty of shots from the competition that ended up standing out over those. I'm a sucker for the shots with the flag in the background, if there's a flag at the venue I'll be trying to figure out a way to get it behind the subject. This one kept jumping out at me because of the eye contact with the lens and of course the smile.
If this is your gymnast send us an EMAIL letting us know and we'll send you a 5x7 of the image, if you know who it is then let them know they can get a free picture.

Let us know what you think by commenting, suggesting, and asking here. If there is something you think would make a good addition to the blog please tell us.

Continue Reading "Cupids Invite" Here!

To start off

We are starting the blog here at Champion Photo because... well because everyone else has one, 

The real reason is, I've started following a few blogs myself and while doing so came to realize that this would be a great way of sharing information with our customers.

I have a few ideas for content, 

1. After every event, as soon as possible I go through all of the images and flag my favorites, these are the ones that end up on the slide shows that you see. I'm going to include one of our favorite images from a recent event on most of the posts and call it "From the Favorites."
2. Tips, I thought this would be interesting to some, there are an infinite amount of photography tips on the web, no doubt, the uniqueness would be that the tips contained here would mainly be relative and geared towards our content. Examples would be a bunch of tips on dealing with the "No Flash" rule during gymnastics events.
3. Questions and suggestions, I thought this would be a good place to open up for questions for us like "why do you always shoot beam at Tri-Star?" and suggestions like "how about shooting something other than beam at Tri-Star."
4. I'm also hoping this will be a good place for marketing, possibly mentioning products or services that you may not be familiar with or announcing new things as they come along. A perfect example of this is the multi photo collage prints that we have started getting very busy with. We always did them, but never really marketed them until recently, and the comment that we keep hearing is "OH I didn't know you did these," this would be our fault for not letting you know we did them.
5. We're also kicking around ideas of little contests, like, if your gymnast is featured here in the blog as one of our favorites, and you send us an email saying "My gymnast's photo was the From the Favorites this week." we'll send you a 5 x 7 of the image. ←so keep that in mind.

"From the Favorites"

So, heres the first "From the Favorites", let me start off by saying that picking a favorite from images that I have shot is always a process that takes too long. For this one I gave myself guidelines, and it helped. The guideline for picking this image was, pick a shot from bars. We shot bars at sectional #1 this spring during warm up and came up with a lot of great images.

If this is your gymnast, send us an email saying "Hey my gymnast was the From the Favorites picture this week, and we'll send you a 5x7 of the image.

Let us know what you think by commenting, and suggesting here. If there is something you think would make a good addition to the blog please tell us.

Continue Reading "To start off" Here!