I got to see the #5 ranked Florida Gators Women's Gymnastics team take on the #1 Georrgia GymDawgs. This is a photo of Courtney Kupets. She is a two-time national champion and helped the US take home the Silver medal in the Athens Olympics in 2003 before enrolling at Georgia . Your thoughts and comments appreciated.

Taken with a D70 and Nikon 70-200 VR from the stands. No flash, ISO 800, f/2.8, 1/180.

I think its alittle too blurry, Also the guy with the bluejeans on in the background distracts me.

I like the composition, the position of the gymnast's body is very interesting, agree that the blue jeaned legs don't help too much, the blurriness doesn;t bother me that much, I think that the action is frozen very well.

Herriot

I think her blurriness works well given that it's a powerful action shot. I think that I might have liked to see more of the apparatus to put it more in perspective. To see whether she was getting ready to grab on again or if she was dismounting. And the nerve of the blue jeaned guy for getting into your image!!

I dont like the photo that well. I cant say that I'm the best photographer and I know how it feels when people say a picture you'r really proud of is crap. but I think this picture doesnt show where the girl is going. to me I see a girl upside down and a bar. but the picture lacks a depth that shows how high off the ground she is. is she 10 feet off the ground? or 5 feet type thing.

I dont like the photo that well. I cant say that I'm the best photographer and I know how it feels when people say a picture you'r really proud of is crap. but I think this picture doesnt show where the girl is going. to me I see a girl upside down and a bar. but the picture lacks a depth that shows how high off the ground she is. is she 10 feet off the ground? or 5 feet type thing.

That's cool. If you don't like it, you don't like it. I'm not that proud of it, although, I've done enough of this to know that this is a tougher shot to get than you might think. I got to shoot from the sidelines of an NFL game once it was almost easy to get good shots (compared to sitting in the stands.)

This is also a tough sort of picture to display within 600 x 600 constraints. If you go for context, you don't see much of the gymnast and miss the the incredible muscularity, which was the most important part of the picture for me.

The blur is a factor of shooting somebody moving fast with the light I had. 2.8 is as fast as my lens gets and ISO 800 is about as high as I can go with my D70 without really bad grain, so that left me at 1/180, which stops some action, but you still get some blur.

Hey LL...I like this a lot. The blurriness factor is fine, since you're getting an action shot here, but also since the important parts of the figure are pretty evident...the muscular legs, the little bits of ribs you can see as she's bending, and so on. Also, it's cool that you apparently caught the shot right before she started looking for the bar, as she's still got her head looking up, looks almost tucked there.
As far as how high up she is, I would think that in a shot like this, it doesn't matter all that much, as she's obviously airborne...know what I mean?
I do agree about the guy in jeans...but it's still a great catch. :)
Emily