Crossfit Craziness

Firstly, apologies to all my gaming related followers as this is another photography post (although there's a couple of pics in here for you Fran :-) ).

More Crossfit craziness.

Last Saturday saw a competition first with the entire comp being held outdoors. Weather was looking dicey during the week, but it cleared up and became quite a scorcher on the day. Some red athletes at the end of the day!

I popped along to photograph the guys from the box (Raw Strength) that I train at, but I also snapped off a few from throughout the day.

Most of the shots are with my 70 - 200mm. I decided just to shoot on Av and set it to f2.8. I wanted to blur out the crowd / other athletes and try to draw the focus on to one athlete (in most cases). I did open the aperture up in a few to show the wider event.

Anyway, enjoy:

"Dead Legs"

 Oh, and none of you are too old for this craziness. I think this guy is probably older....

"Syncro Sucks"

"Team Dynamics"

 "Army Relay"

 "That winning feeling...."

Thought for next time... use a slow shutter speed to try for good background blur with the sprints.

Thanks for reading.

More Gannets....

Sunday was another photography session with a trip out to Muriwai to get some practice in with photographing the Gannets there.

Mainly 'cause someone has a whole heap of new toys that he was itching to try out...

Amateurs.... ;-)

Being a public holiday the place was packed. Some decent surf also meant a lot of surfers out. Only downside was that there was very little wind, so the Gannet's weren't that active. Still a few shots worth playing around with....

The Gannets aren't the most graceful or controlled when it comes to landing (on land)... :-)

The dark clouds that came through made for a nice backdrop...

Trying for a bit of speed blur - down to 1/160th @ 200mm

Finally, a couple of shots of the surfing. The 70 - 200mm wasn't the best lens to try and photograph the surfers since they were some way out. These are cropped almost 1:1...

 A bit of fun. All these big lens have got me thinking that I really need to get out with my Sigma 150 - 500mm again, but I'm enjoying using my 70 - 200mm far too much!

Oh, Rob and Mark even got a game of X-Wing in. Will be good to get into regular gaming again too :-)

Thanks for reading.

Alien Invasion!

Ok, so a bit of a lame photoshop attempt, but a bit of fun nonetheless :-)

Rangitoto island has been lit up with some powerful lights over the last few nights to celebrate Maori culture.

Made for a pretty interesting effect. Something a lot of people were unaware off, so it created a lot of questions and wonder!

This time without the Shadow ships...

With such a cloudy / overcast night it was pretty tough to shoot, but we got lucky with some cloud cover. I think it creates an interesting look. Not something you see everyday anyway.

Prior to heading down to the coastline to look out over Rangitoto, Mark G and I had popped over to the Northshore to photograph the Auckland CBD at night, but in particular the fireworks. The display was part of Auckland Anniversary celebrations.

We both arrived at a not so secret location just as the sun was setting. Murhpy's law.... the cruise ship in the harbour had impeccable timing with a departure timed nicely with the fireworks!?!

A bit of fun and overall I'm happy with how my first fireworks shoots have turned out.

Until next time :-)