Intersections: Ski Racing and Photography; Some Thoughts, Part 1
With ski racing and ski race photography finished for the year, there is finally time to write and post blogs, after a long, race-imposed hiatus. So, perhaps bizarrely, the first topic will be about ski race photography.
On a Venn diagram, the intersection of photography and alpine ski racing is small. And it is safe to say that this tiny intersection isn't of much interest to the larger world.
Diverse nooks, ranging from athleticism to aesthetics, from mountains to electronics and optics, inhabit this intersection. And the intersection invites interesting discretionary choices, aesthetic and technical.
These samples of the end product serve as a brief introduction.
All five depict very athletic and very skilled ski racing. All five depict critical moments on race courses, in races that might have each required 50 or so turns around or through gates. And in this, the five also reflect the photographer's selection of images that optimize some sense of what the races, or at least the depicted turns, were about and something of the racers' choices in negotiating these turns. Racers are, of course, essential to both ski racing and ski racing photography.
This series of posts will discuss what makes for good ski race photographs. They will also discuss the fluidity of those criteria. They will discuss how a photographer decides which image is "the" image that best depicts the subject. And they will offer a few guidelines for assessing race photographs. Finally, they hope to encourage comments and questions that challenge my views on these things.
I will also try to remember to thank my models for providing worthy subject matter. From the top:
Randi von Wichman is currently an Alyeska Ski Club U19 who has been racing at a high level for, it seems, decades. She is here crushing a giant slalom gate.
Alyeska Ski Club U16 Finnigan Donley is a remarkable young racer. How remarkable will be seen in the next few years. In 2021, he attended the Western Region U16 Championships in Mammoth Mtn. There were four races: two Super-Gs, a GS, and a slalom. He won all four. In the second photo he has been launched by a roll at the bottom of the Steilhung but he will return to the snow exactly on line for the next gate. The bump launched many racers, but few came down on line. In the third photo he is taking the shortest possible line through a three-gate flush by riding the outside edge of his inside ski while maintaining a very narrow stance. This is a very dynamic and risky move. His center of mass is, of course, at least 18 inches laterally inside the only ski edge that is touching the snow.
Hunter Eid is a wonderful racer who grew up skiing at Alyeska. He here cleanly arcs past a gate very near the finish line in a FIS giant slalom, and manages to arc an efficient turn around the gate without losing speed on this relatively flat section of the course.
Alexandra von Walter-Gentner is an Alyeska Ski Club U12 who races with great speed and great skill. She blocked this gate perfectly, and did it with the very high and early edge-angles required by modern slalom racing, even on relatively flat terrain, as here. She won both runs in this race as a U12; her times were also better than all the U14 women and indeed, all the U12 and U14 men.
Comments
After a lifetime of mainly expressing myself with words, my postings here will mainly rely on images. They will speak for themselves to some extent, but I'll usually add a few comments of explanation. I've taken photographs for decades, since the 1950's, inspired in part by my father's photographic skill. Four years of photo assignments and quality darkroom time eventually gave way to decades of casual and family picture-taking. I re-immersed myself when I left film and turned to digital.