Feb 20 U16+ Men's GS Run 2

Created 11-Mar-23

151 photos

Finally, the men's second run is uploaded. Thanks for your patience.
This was the very last of all the galleries generated by the eight recent days of racing, February 17-24.

This upload was long-delayed because there were eight consecutive days of intensive races to be photographed, including the FIS-U/RMISA races. This is the last of the galleries for the Alyeska Cup races.

First priority, as usual, was to getting images and captions to the ADN. Well, for the Alyeska Cup U16 and up classes that priority didn't result in any photo coverage. But it wasn't for lack of trying. And media priority was required for the FIS-U/RMISA races, both at the ADN an SkiRacing Media (which used a bunch of my college race photos).

The light, as usual this winter, wasn't great, but at least it wasn't snowing or raining on the GS day. Nonetheless, it has taken a lot of processing effort for all four February 20 GS galleries (two for each gender) to get acceptable image quality. Oddly, once processed, the photos look pretty good despite the lack quality light. One reason is that I often resorted to using additional processing programs (Topaz makes several good ones that I sometimes use in addition to Lightroom) to improve image quality. This was time consuming. The GS day, February 20, resulted in four galleries, and each gallery took about three hours of work after race day. It only took about two hours of actual shooting (plus the usual set up and so on) on race day, but that required about 12 or more hours total of computer effort.

I included more images than usual for this gallery and the other recent galleries. One major reason is that I don't know whether I'll be photographed these races next year. It is hard and demanding, and the intelligent thing would be to make this season the last. But since it might be the last local junior-dominant race I'll shoot, I wanted to give lots of coverage to the racers I've been photographing for years and who have improved so dramatically, and to the visitors from the other programs. And there is even a nostalgia aspect (although possible premature).

So I hope everyone can enjoy these photos and those in the other galleries.

As usual, too, getting the luminosity consistent between 151 images is almost impossible, since the light on different gates differs wildly, even in shade with no sun. Also, the distance from camera to each racer as the lens sees it at the chosen zoom setting for a given image affects the exposure. Racers are usual wearing suits darker than the snow; closer racers occupy more of the exposure sensors in the camera, whereas more distant racers are smaller compared to the snowy background. So consistency across the gallery is hard to achieve, but no one is buying all the images. Just enjoy one at a time. If anyone happens to buy an image, the luminosity will be carefully adjusted.