Super Cool Kayak Cross AND the Evolution of ONE Image!

Yesterday was a day off from any contractual shooting, and I decided to make the trek out to the Stade d'eau vive Vaires-sur-Marne (the Olympic Nautical Center where they have the rowing and canoe area). I was going out there to photograph the Kayak Cross which is a new sport this year. I had seen some images from this venue and really wanted to check it out. And much like the Beach Volleyball area and the night shot of the Eiffel Tower, I was out there for just one image. And I will tell you about that in a minute.

I decided to change up my gear for the day and travel a little lighter. I brought my smaller Thinktank bag, with just the Canon R5 MKII, RF 100-500mm lens and RF 24-70mm lens in case I wanted to shoot wide shots (which I did not do).

Let's start at the beginning of the race.

They drop four kayakers at a time off of a platform, and then they race down the course, competing with each other the whole way down. The drop is really dramatic. And part of this was what I was going after, but hey I am getting ahead of myself here.

I got down low at the start, to get them coming right at me.

After they drop off, they have to traverse the course and go around certain obstacles. I walked the course to find different areas to shoot from. 

I got down low to the edge of the man-made river to try and get my lens right into the eyes of the athletes.

Focusing on these fast moving kayakers was no easy task, but the Canon R5 MKII did a very good job of helping me out with this.

I positioned myself so that I would be shooting through these two gates to see if I could get a cool shot this way. As it turned out, it worked really well. 

The boaters are allowed to hit each other (think bumper cars) along the way, and that made it really interesting. But most of the time, they were coming down one at a time.

I tried to shoot from positions along the course where I would have a clean background, without TV cameras and other distractions.

Getting around the gates was no easy feat for these athletes.

OK, so now let's get to the one shot I really wanted to capture at this venue. That photo was of the drop-in  site. I had seen some images of the boats entering the water and the cool splash patterns they made. I wanted to capture that, and try to make a really great image for myself.

But...this was not a simple task, and here is why:

In order to get an image with good symmetry, I needed all four kayaks to enter the water at the same time. So, in this example above, it did not work out (with the kayaker in the yellow behind the rest). I also moved my focal point off center (to be over the third boat) so that I would be focused on the kayaks as I followed them down, and I would not be focusing on the background.

You can see here that three of the kayaks were in the water with the fourth one not there yet.

And there were times when they would enter the water at the same time, but the splashes were too much.

There was this one time when I had two issues working against me. 

1. The kayaker on the far left came out of the gate crooked and was heading far right.

2. The boom camera from the Olympic Broadcasting System (OBS) swung right into my shot. Argh, all of us photographers really dislike OBS as they are always getting in the way of our photos. :)

For this shot, I was worried that the kayak on the left was a tad late hitting the water but...

...it actually worked out well. This photo is my second favorite shot of the day.

But THIS is the photo I wanted. I love the splashes coming up nicely from each kayak, and the fact that you can see through the splashes to see a glimpse of each athlete. YES!!! I was VERY excited to capture this frame, and it is one of my favorites from the Games so far. The image is fairly small on the blog, but if you zoom in (as you can see below) you can really see the beautiful arc of the water.

In total, I invested 7 hours of my time in transportation and shooting time, and it took me hundreds of photos to get this one, but it is well worth it. What do you think? Leave a comment here on the blog and let me know. Would you invest 7 hours for one photo?

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* Thank you to Canon, Apple, ProGrade Digital, Crucial, Tiffen, DataColor, ThinkTank, Adobe, and CameraBits  for providing loaner product to me for the Olympic Games!

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