How I Shot That - The Waiting Skaters

How I Shot That - The Waiting Skaters

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Figure skating, like in a lot of things, is filled with an atmosphere of 'hurry up and wait'.  I couldn't think of a finer personification of that statement than with this moment.

Every year, the City of La Crosse Park and Recreation and Forestry department puts on an ice show for the people that participated in their winter figure skating program.  Over the years, through my wife, I have gotten to know many of these kids quite well.  At the time, the camera I was using was still new to me (Sony a6000).  But I loved how flexible it is for me in this environment.  Specially since it let me get a shot like this.

This is a little bit before the ice show started.  I had previously determined that this location is where I would shoot the entire show from, because the door there would open up to the ice.  At this moment, many of the higher level skaters were lining up at this door for the show's opening number.

One of the  challenges about figure skating and photographing kids is a lot of people don't always like their kids faces online.  So I'm always looking for a photo that will be universal of sorts.  When we were waiting for the show to start, I'm seeing all of these kids with all of their skates.  For me what I think worked best, very few of the skaters had the same skate as someone else.  What got me excited was, everyone skating with whatever they had... an incredible cross-section of skaters.

So I got low with my camera (from Amazon: Sony a6000) and I kept on my 50mm f1.8(from Amazon) lens.  By focusing on some of the middle skaters more of the skates could stay in relative focus (I didn't need bokeh balls in the background).  I could get the shot down to 1/60th of a second but still needing my ISO up to 1000.

And I must say, the best reward of this photo was printing it on metallic paper.  This is a shot that needs to show the shine of the blades while making the skates shimmer a little bit.  I liked it cropped or like this.  So it can be taken down to 16x9 and it still looks great!  Honestly, I think ice rinks all over could have this photo to decorate with.