Quote of the day: "From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man--the function of his reasoning mind." --Ayn Rand
These are the photos I took at the Dartmouth Intramural Climbing Competition on Feb. 25, 2001. I have divided the photos into three categories, based on my subjective criteria which I describe in each section. Obviously, this has nothing to do with the person in the photo or what they are doing--it is based instead on my (in)ability to properly capture them doing their amazing, gravity-defying feats.
Since I don't know most people's names, I decided to use thumbnails as links to the full-size photos but I have included names when I knew them. Most of the shots were taken at 1280x960 resolution. If the picture was of good quality, I left it at that resolution (that's really too large for use on normal web pages though). In some cases I reduced the image to 640x480 to sharpen up the photo. The shots taken near the entrance to the gym are much better than those taken elsewhere because of different lighting (I wish the finals would have been there but, of course, that would have been difficult for the spectators ;-).
These are the best shots in my opinion. These shots are in focus (for the most part), well lit, and most importantly the face (and especially the eyes) of the subject are visible. Hopefully, there is also an expression of intensity/emotion on the subject's face. I found it difficult to get a lot of shots of people's faces because most of the time they are looking at a wall and not at me! (I shouldn't have been surprised by this, but I never really thought about it before.)
Diana Vernazza
Jason Kobilka
Gabriel Martinez
Kim Iwamoto
Morgan Heater - winner of the men's high mass category
Nira Salant
These shots are not too bad, but I didn't feel they were in the "best" category, usually because the person's eyes are not visible or there is some motion that was not frozen by the camera (this happens when there isn't enough light to allow a fast shutter speed).
Jason Kobilka
Robert Black
Robert Black
???
Kyle Larson
???
Kim Iwamoto
Kim Iwamoto
Nira Salant
Jill Haynie
Misa Peterman - winner of the women's gym rat category
Misa Peterman
Diana Vernazza
Michael Golub
Ben Miller - winner of the men's gym rat category
These shots are mostly in focus but I feel the photo is deficient in some way, usually because the person's face is turned away from me or the lighting is poor. However, I thought you would still enjoy seeing these photos, perhaps to get feedback on your technique? :-)
Sara Lanham
Sara Lanham
Julia Payne
Evan Skow
Diana Vernazza
Diana Vernazza