Wanamaker Photography

Frozen Face Cheerleader

Posted February 03, 2008 By Chris Wanamaker

This past Saturday, we photographed our first ever Cheerleading Competition at the Minisink Valley Ultimate Cheerleading Competition. While we’ve photographed cheerleaders at football games, we were still in the dark about what we’d encounter during the event itself. Let me start off by saying that cheerleaders at football games are a bit more predictable. These competitions happened fast and moved over every possible inch of the mat!

Shots like the one above pretty much became the theme of the day. While each of us tried our best to anticipate the next flip, kick or jump … we found that we were swinging the lenses around in hopes that we’d capture something great. Well, we did get some great shots … but not the ones we had in mind!

The shot above was taken with our Mark III with a 70-200mm lens and a hot-shoe mounted flash at F2.8 at 1/250 with the ISO at 1250. Most of our close-up shots of the girls in action yielded more roller-coaster and screaming-match shots … except for this one … which was taken during the actual performance itself. After becoming an instant classic, we all started comparing our “frozen face” shots as the rest of the day went on … but nothing seemed to top this one!

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There Are 4 Comments So Far

1. Comment By Alex On February 08 2008

   Fantastic capture! The expression is pure magic.

   I am left speechless - this is what photography is all about - freezing a magical moment.

2. Comment By Chris Wanamaker On February 10 2008

   While magical for us as photographers, I don’t think she will feel the same way when she finaly sees this image!

3. Comment By Alex On February 14 2008

   This shot got me thinking about DOF. Can I ask some questions?

   As I’m trying to become a little more familiar with dof, I’d like to know the focal length and approximately how far you were from the subject when you got this shot.

   It’s a shame that a DOF calculator cannot be built into cameras nowadays - should be easy to do with all the info that is transmitted from lens to body - a few lines of code. Do you think this would be useful? Not so much for the experienced photog, but for those ‘learning the ropes’. A press of a button and, in the viewfinder, you see the dof.

   Any thoughts?

   All the best,

   Alex

4. Comment By Chris Wanamaker On February 14 2008

   For anyone new to photography, DOF stands for Depth Of Field.

   We use Canon equipment exclusively, but I am pretty sure that most DSLRs on the market have a DOF button.

   On the Canons, it is located on the lower left side of the lense and when pressed, allows you to see what the DOF is going to be.