You did a good job with these. The close crop on the butterfly works well when the swimmer's form is poor - as is your's here. Those arms should be straight out, no bend at the elbow. (she looks young so likely the strength is not there yet) You'll find when shooting a better swimmer, you want the full arm extension, especially the guys as they can show off the muscles they've worked so hard on building.
Here's an odd size crop but it illustrates what the arms are supposed to look like in the fly:
Locations - my preference is side deck for most. Lane ends are good for breast and fly only, especially if you want full face like you got, but I think you can also get some effective captures of these strokes from side deck.
Swimmers have a rhythm and you count off when they will surface for air on free and fly, you just need to be ready.
On breast, they're up every stroke, and a good swimmer will pop way out of the water, so it's probably the easiest to capture.
Backstroke is good from the side provided you fire when the far arm is up. Near arm blocks the face with arm and water trail.
Another frequent swim shooter on here (Steve from CA) made a comment one time about the number of lane ropes in a shot....getting low to get them added to the shot. I watch for that now where appropriate, and you can see in your second image that it does add to the shot.
On the starts - a bit over-rated IMO, unless you isolate on one swimmer. Otherwise they're very busy shots with the timers in the BG, swimmers in the next heat in the BG, the DQ, line, the 5m line ...everything it seems makes it to that exposure !
And of course, the outdoor pool is much easier than an indoor pool.
Just my $.02.
cheers
Darcy
