Personal Journey and Adventures of Nina

Short course season means that it is not so far to run from one side of the pool to the other. I guess it is not very safe to run but as the ultimate people pleaser, I feel compelled to get the shot for my client. Alas, I am going to have to learn to slow down before I end up in the pool! The lighting was horrid as usual. Even worse this time because it was it was hampered by clouds and the majority of my light is natural. Of course, when the sun finally came out, the officials, understandably, ordered the blinds down because the reflection off the water means they cannot see the strokes and turns. We did our best as usual. Canon have promised the use of their new  1D X camera  and  70-200mm lens  which both promise amazing quality in low light so we will see. We may have some new equipment for the Long Course Season...stay tuned! The portraits were a lot of fun! LOVE shooting portraits...I don't have to run anywhere!

The SMNE Summer Championships were a blast. There were lots of records and some great photos which were helped along by a new faster, sharper 300mm lens. It was difficult to choose but here are a few favourites. You can view the entire set here   on my swim photos website.

Because my Flash based website is just SO slow, I decided to launch a new website with Photoshelter to handle the large number of orders coming in for swim action photo's from various meets.  So far, so good. There are a couple of improvements that I would like to see made in the near future but on the whole, I'm pretty impressed. Thank you to all my clients who happily gave me feedback regarding the previous site. It helps to know when you're doing something wrong as well as when you get it right! Here is the link to the new site. It is also available from the splash page on www.ninabeilby.com .

The start of the short course season brings groups of swimmers from around the area aiming to make personal best times for State and Metro which are only weeks away. For me it meant the first time using my Canon Mark IV. I had a few adjustments to make but then got the hang of the amazing rapid fire...a far sight quicker than the Mark II. In addition to the 10 fps, I liked the extra zoom. The 300mm lens is just too bulky for me so it's a nice compromise to stick the 70-200mm on the 1.3x sensor. The lighting at SOPAC is all but non existent. At one stage I was feeling ready to sleep it was that dark. Around 12800 ISO dark. These challenges are sent to try us!

Swim photography is not just about capturing the strokes, although that is fun too. For me, I like to capture moments inside and outside the pool. The tension as a team mate is swimming a close race. Sheer joy or occasionally disappointment after a tough swim. This weekend, I am the official photographer for the SMNE Speedo Sprints. A big challenge because it is an indoor venue and the light is low.  Sometimes the swimmers didn't breathe, especially in the 50's. Other times they breathed away from me.  There were no breaks. Just 8 hours of walking around the pool taking shots. I don't really have a sports camera, so I had to rely on timing. My 200mm lens meant that I could only shoot 4 lanes...I really needed two of me! My memory cards filled up quickly, (approx 40GB) even with reviewing and deleting. I was able to download a card on to my portable hard drive whilst I filled the next card but I was nervous deleting the images from the card so that I cou

Another successful meet for the Lane Cove Swim Club. We really enjoy these SMNE meets as they are well organized, they combine the little and big swimmers and they are generally on time...it also was great that we won the door prize - a money tree full of scratch-it tickets. Here are some of the highlights: