Spirit of Triathlon Photo Contest – Week 2 Review

As I had hoped, but without any certainty a batch of new images were submitted for our Week 2 Review.   The best part is that the images keep getting better and better and my initial fear of not having a set of 20 great images for our Triathlete.com gallery is now gone. The challenge, which is a great thing, is how to select the 20 most meaningful images for inclusion in the gallery AND we still have four weeks to go in the contest.

Here are the full contest details

Enter your images here!

At the 2012 Triathlon Business International Conference, Rob Urbach, USA Triathlon CEO, upon completion the multi-media presentation that opened his keynote speech turned to the audience and said ‘I never get tired of looking at Triathlon Photos!

I completely agree with Rob. I love looking at great Triathlon Photos and lucky for me Rob had included a bunch of mine in his presentation.

I love shooting and just seeing great photos, whether they are mine or not.

We are so lucky that we participate in a sport where race directors work to have the best venue and manufacturers are always moving forward to have the most aerodynamic and ascetically pleasing designs, to say nothing about the thousands of triathletes who are pushing themselves through their daily training, just to put on a great show for the rest of us.

Again, the images I selected for review this week are solely based on what I wanted to comment on and have no bearing on the final outcome of the contest or what will be included in the final gallery.

We all know that competing is a family event.  Very few of us could ever be involved without the incredible support and understanding of our family and friends and most would never make to the starting line.

In this first image, we have a Dave Schutz and his son both wearing number 2613 at about the 18 mile mark of the Ironman Cozumel, with dad sitting on the ground and the next generation triathlete offering encouragement, support and love at a very difficult part of Dave’s Ironman.

Mile 18+ at Ironman Cozumel

Photographically, I have always loved the repeating geometric patterns and one of this week’s submissions did not disappoint. Molly Mullane of Wisconsin submitted this really cool run shot from the Ironman Louisville.

Ironman Louisville

Even though this is a very cool shot, it could have been even better! As I have mentioned in prior blogs, I always shoot a series of shots to really try to show the athlete at their best point from a biomechanics standpoint. In this image, the athlete is at the bottom of their stride and although he looks incredibly fit, he looks much heavier than he could have if the photographer has caught them at the top of the stride.

Finally for this week, we have the light at the end of the tunnel, both literally and metaphorically. This image is from the Ironman Hawaii 70.3 and was shot by Lee Gruenfeld.

Ironman Hawaii 70.3

Lee is a well-known author who occasionally shoots to supplement his stories. If I could write like that, I wouldn’t have to carry so much equipment.

I look forward to more great images, I will post another blog next week.

Cheers!