European Lumberjack Sports Championships

Hello All,

I posted these nearly 24 hours ago in the Sports area, unfortunately I didn't have much joy in way of responses so I thought I would post here - Although a little daunting.

The only way I'll learn is by people pointing out my issues, and hopefully providing some advice on avoiding said issues.

Unfortunately my timing wasn't great with some of the pictures, therefore I don't have any of the top sections of wood separating from the bottom - I believe this would have made for some much better pictures.

Well, here we go;

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Some of your photos are better than others and I'll tell ya the reason why. Some show the back of someone, which typically isn't very interesting. Others show their faces and the effort they're putting forth, which is much more compelling.

A few of the shots could use a tighter crop on the subject. Also, I'd probably have shot more open to blur out the background better. The crowd is a bit distracting and the best way to improve that at this point is to blur them out. Of course, the choice of lens and distances may make bokeh hard.

I honestly didn't think to shoot at the widest aperture, I kind of hovered around f8 as at the time I wasn't too concerned about it - But now that you've pointed it out it makes sense.

We positioned ourselves at the one end of the arena, at the furthest point from us you had the activities in picture one, once they had cut through the log then their team member would continue in the centre of the arena - I've just noticed I've not posted pictures of this, however, once they had cut through their log then the third team mate would continue closest to us in picture two.

We could have definitely moved around which admittedly we should have done, at least we would have had shots from each side - As you've said, the back of someone isn't that interesting.

One very annoying thing, wherever we moved the chap in the next picture would walk into our shot and block most of the view - He was definitely doing this on purpose, at one point he put his boot up on the wood and was looking at us with events going on behind him.

To convey the action, it would be good to experiment with slower shutter speeds. Some of the ones with wood flying off appear as if the chips are hanging in space. There's little sense of movement.

Were there audience members on all sides? If not, you might try positioning yourself with a clearer background.

Unfortunately there were people on all sides, with the majority located in the same area we were shooting from.

I agree, some of the action is just too frozen - I do have other images which I've yet to process, here's an example (I didn't want to post more than eight images as per the rules to start);

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That's what I'm talking about. The axe is moving, yet you got his face solid. That's very good. Crowd is blurred too. Clone out the plastic cup on the lawn.

Thank You.

I didn't notice the cup down there, I'll take a look at sorting that out - Cheers.

The following chap, Jim, was impressive - 77 years of age and he came in third in this competition (just to note there were four contenders all much younger than him);

http://farm4.static.fl​ickr.com …74357149_bc0beb​7a83_b.jpg

He also managed around 22 seconds to climb up a 90 foot pole, that was amazing to see him move so fast.