Utah Olympic Center Ski Jump Pool

This is something different. Way different. I got invited to check out a ski jump camp at the Utah Olympic Park up in Park City. This is one way that skiers learn to do complicated aerial tricks without ending up dead or in a wheelchair. Yup. That can happen when you're 15 to 30 feet in the air and land wrong.

They've got a bunch of different sized jumps with either plastic or astroturf-like ramps and a deep pool to land in. As they land a burst of air comes up from the bottom of the pool to soften the impact. I was there for a kids' practice camp but there were some pros practicing there as well. This is a sequence of big mountain pro Grete Elliasen, doing a backflip. Note the Red Bull helmet. You can't buy those. If you see someone wearing a Red Bull helmet you can be sure they're one of the best athletes in the world.

Here are some more ski jump practice photos from the Utah Olympic Park. They were all shot with my Canon EOS 7D and 70-200mm f/2.8L. For the sequence I used the Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS. I also used a polarizer. I shot all of these at ISO 800 between 1/1000th and 1/2000th of a second. It turned out that 1/1000th was actually a bit slow. The sequence has a little bit of motion blur in it - these skiers are moving really fast!

Here are a couple more, for perspective. The first one is the lineup on the main ramp, with a skier doing a kick turn to drop in. The second is one of the few times someone hit the biggest jump. He's got to be at least 25 feet in the air. I tried to shoot a sequence of that jump but the skier went out of the frame :)

I really like the capture of the Stay Puff Marsh Mellow Man pushing the car in the top clouds of the second picture in post #3, Jeff

great facility, great photos

wow incredible!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by pleincadre

wow incredible!

---

I know. It was a really cool thing to take pictures of - especially since it's skiers in summer in a swimming pool. It's just so unique :)

It's just so crazy to see them with life preservers on!! What a fantastic opportunity.