Challenges and goals. When you reach them, set yourself some more. So here’s the breakdown, My first venture with a point and click camera was stunting on sport-bikes. It kind of came along with being married to a rider and making use of my time when I wasn’t jumping off the back of a crotch rocket skiing, hanging on like a book bag in a wheelie or standing looking pretty on the back seat while the hubby rode on. I got called the crazy woman on the back of the bike plenty you could say. But I wasn’t always stunting along. While I enjoyed riding and definitely miss it, I love my camera. That being said, I wasn’t passing up the chance to photograph someone I was certainly a fan of at Broward Motorsports’ Grand Opening. Yes, I finally got to take in live and in person, Jason Britton joined by Ian Gaines of Team No Limit doing what they do best, that stunt life.
Now, here’s where the challenges and goals statement comes from so allow me to step away from the actual event for just a quick moment. You see, I’m a right handed person who is left-eye dominant. In other words, I’m cross dominant. Most people have one side of their body that’s stronger than the other. If you’re right-handed, chances are you do everything with your right hand — writing, brushing your teeth, eating, etc. That also means you likely have stronger sight in your right eye, stronger hearing in your right ear, and would react more with your right foot. When we write, hit, kick, or turn our head to hear, we’re typically doing it all with the same side. Not me. My brain tends to prefer my left eye when focusing which means when I’m shooting, whether its a camera or even a gun lets say, I’m using my left eye to aim. It can sometimes be awkward positioning wise and so, my goal is to strengthen my right eye.
Here is where that ties in to this set. I decided what better time than now to start exercising that lovely right eye of mine. So here I am photographing basically a sports event, catching myself constantly switching over to my left eye. Yes, I probably should have started easy with still objects, but I love a challenge. So there I was, absolutely loving being around the sound of sport bikes, hearing the clutch engage and the wheels come up, feeling the adrenaline of the riders as they performed their stunts and wowed the crowd time and time again. It brought back a lot of fond memories for me all while challenging present day me. Several times throughout the show I would get frustrated that I was missing shots or that they were out of focus. I even missed the money shot when Jason Britton aimed his bike as well as his skid in my direction. While that slightly disappointed me, all in all I am quite pleased with how the set turned out.
I upload my top 20 here with the full set up on my Facebook page. I will say that there are some out of focus ones. I’m sharing them with you regardless of the fact that they are not tack-sharp because I want to not only show you the good, you get to see my learning material as well. Let me know what you think.
