Gymnastics Competition

On Saturday and Sunday, ISB hosted its first gymnastics competition. Aleena competed on Saturday in the level one girls level. She did a nice job, and I think that she had a lot of fun. She and her friend McKayla were in the same group, so they were together the entire time.

Aleena competed in four events. The final event was the balance beam. During her scored competition, she saw our nanny Yaow and McKayla's nanny Meow and stuck her tongue out at them. There she is walking on a balance beam and she sticks her tongue out at someone in the audience.

Aleena and McKayla ended up playing together after the competition. All in all I think they spent about eleven hours together on Saturday.

I was asked to take some photos of ISB gymnasts. There was also a team of professional photographers there photographing the event. They had a team of at least eight photographers plus another seven or eight support staff. I saw some of the books that they put together, and they are pretty slick.

Indoor sports photography presents some challenges because of the lighting. The lighting is generally is dim and often has a yellowish tint. The dimness is exacerbated by the fact that they are moving which means that a slower shutter speed can result in subject blur. To compensate, I shot in a high ISO. The advantage of higher ISO settings is that they require less light and allow you to shoot at a faster shutter speed. The disadvantage is that higher ISO shots introduce more noise into the photo.

I shot between 1600 and 3200 ISO. On my old 40D, 3200 would have been completely unacceptable, but with the 5D Mark II, it isn't nearly as bad. I took over 2,000 shots, so I'm working my way through them. Below are a couple of Aleena, including one of her sticking out her tongue.