Ski Racing: Racers' Faces (Action Portraits)
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At its best, race photography reveals something of the racers' interior personalities, and is not merely a chronological catalogue of one racer after another passing a few gates. Nor is it simply a collection of some outdoor events and athletic moments on race day, an emotionless historical account of what happened during a race.
Certainly modern cameras have the undisputed technical ability to capture the action with high-quality images. But they also potentially can capture the details of those moments when racers confront on-hill challenges. For me, the images of these moments are one of the main attractions of photographing alpine racing. That is especially so for the racers who repeatedly appear in front of my lenses and on my computer screen when I process and upload the images. It is a special treat watching them progress during their roughly five-year junior careers, and sometimes on into their college racing careers.
The resulting images are Racer Faces. I consider them action portraits that reveal something of the racers' personalities. In effect, I am trying to use the race hill as a portrait studio. The ideal is an image that depicts a racer's eyes, an ideal not always met because eyes are not always visible behind darker or reflective google lenses. But when they are visible, the highest goal is seeing eyelash sharpness on my big computer screen. Again, a goal not always perfectly achieved.
The resulting portraits depict a range of emotions and personalities. Some racers are intent, concentrating, immersed in reading the course and skiing it as well as they can. Others attack, treating each gate as a personal affront. Some seem surprisingly placid, and some display actual joy. A few, but not many, are impassive, perhaps intentionally, and perhaps reasoning that every race, and, indeed, every gate, has its ups and downs; better to reserve emotional displays until after crossing the finish line.
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Equanimity is on display here, even as the racer realizes he is passing on the wrong side of the gate and must abandon.
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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.