Last modified on 01/27/07

kotay.net - Keith - Photography - Sports - Climbing Comp 2003, Page 1

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. 2, 2003. 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 (if you know someone's name, please let me know: .

Most of the shots were taken at 2272x1704, 2048x1536, or 1280x960 resolutions. All of the photos were reduced to lower resolutions, however. This year I used some new, high resolution cameras: a 4 megapixel Canon G3 and a 3 megapixel Fuji 601. I thought these new cameras would produce better photos, but the Canon is noisy at the 400 ISO sensitivity needed in the climbing gym and the Fuji did not seem to autofocus as well as the older 2 megapixel Fuji I used previously (or my hands are becoming unsteady in my old age ;-). As a result the image sizes were decreased to reduce noise and/or sharpen a slightly out of focus image. The color balance in some of the photos is a bit off because it varies from place to place (especially from the old gym to the new gym). If I had the time I'd try to correct it in each photo but that would take forever... Another thing I noticed is some instances of very red skin. Although people were exerting themselves to the utmost, I don't think their skin was that red at the time when I took the photograph. This is probably caused by a slight underexposure of the person due to the lighter wall color. I should have corrected for this during some of the finals which were shot with the walls as the only background (many of the photos include the floor which is very dark and tends to average out the lighter walls).

Quick Links

Page 2 (Okay Shots)
Page 3 (More Okay Shots)
Page 4 (Route Setting Shots)

The Best Shots

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. It's hard to get many shots of people's faces because most of the time they are looking at a wall and not at me! Other candidates for "best shots" are photos of radical climbing moves or photos I thought were well-composed.

???

Cate Birtley

Lisa Borowsky (winner of the women's recreational category)

Christine Balaz

Michael Golub (winner of the men's gym rat category)

The Pretty Good Shots

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, the focus is a bit off, 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).