Some equestrian jumping

[mattb]

Shot these yesterday with my K-5 and DA* 60-250/4.


IMGP7494 by MattB.net, on Flickr


IMGP7512 by MattB.net, on Flickr


IMGP7520 by MattB.net, on Flickr


IMGP7532 by MattB.net, on Flickr

[Photo-John]

You really captured the action well in these, Matt. Makes me want to shoot a horse show!

The framing seems a bit off on them. Did you have a hard time predicting where they'd be jumping? And how come you didn't crop them to be more proportionate?

[mattb]

Thanks John, and yes, it was tough to tell exactly where they would jump. Some very close to one edge, others close to the opposite edge, or the last one (the winner) was in the middle. I was zoomed all the way in at 250mm and that made it tough to quickly re-frame.
I wanted to be sure the full height of the jump was visible for scale, and I wanted a little context. So my aim was to put the riders off-center but heading into the frame as I've been taught to do. The goal was a pleasing (enough) composition capturing action and some context. I felt like I got those things. These are likely to be in the paper this week too.

[mattb]

A couple of them wound up on the cover of the local paper yesterday.

gct 2011-07-11 by MattB.net, on Flickr

[Photo-John]

Thanks John, and yes, it was tough to tell exactly where they would jump. Some very close to one edge, others close to the opposite edge, or the last one (the winner) was in the middle. I was zoomed all the way in at 250mm and that made it tough to quickly re-frame.
I wanted to be sure the full height of the jump was visible for scale, and I wanted a little context. So my aim was to put the riders off-center but heading into the frame as I've been taught to do. The goal was a pleasing (enough) composition capturing action and some context. I felt like I got those things. These are likely to be in the paper this week too.

That's what I thought but I wanted to confirm. There is a lot of space to cover with each of those jumps. I can see that.

Congratulations on getting the photos on the front page of the paper.

By the way - I forgot to ask this in my first comment. In the first photo is the horse bailing on the jump?

[mattb]

Thanks.
Yes, the horse decided at the last second that they weren't doing that jump. The rider almost went over without the horse!

[rish002]

What an amazing timing man!
Awesome shot!!