Utah Olympic Center Ski Jump Pool

**Photo-John** · 08-31-2011, 11:01 AM

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.

**Photo-John** · 08-31-2011, 11:08 AM

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!

**Photo-John** · 08-31-2011, 11:14 AM

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