Shot swimming on Thursday, for the first time in almost exactly a year.
(On a related note, my portable hard drive died that weekend, and I worked all day on Valentine’s Day. Easily one of the worst weekends of my life.)
© 2011 by The York Dispatch. Dover Area High School's Summer Dacheux swims the butterfly as the third swimmer against York Suburban High School in the 200-yard medley relay at Dover Area Intermediate School on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011. Dacheux's lane won the event with a time of 1:58:43.
Several things that made shooting this high school meet interesting and different from my experiences at the Missouri Grand Prix:
- They didn’t have a heat sheet — a list of all the races with all the lane assignments — available at the beginning of the meet. The York Dispatch writer told me they withhold this information so the swimmers don’t know against whom they’re competing until they’re on the diving blocks.
- The heat sheet that was available at the end of the meet, complete with results, didn’t have the lane assignments. Instead, the swimmers for each race were listed by how they placed. So it’s a damn good thing I only photographed the first- or second-place swimmers in each event, and took careful notes.
- The swimmers and their classmates were really, really cheering each other on. (At the Prix, usually it was only the coaches who were doing any yelling.)
© 2011 by The York Dispatch. Dover Area High School swimmers cheer as fellow members win the boys 400-yard freestyle relay as the last event against York Suburban High School at Dover Area Intermediate School on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011. The Dover girls defeated the York Suburban girls 107-76; the Dover boys defeated the York Suburban boys 96-87.
© 2011 by The York Dispatch. Dover Area High School's Scott Tilley swims the 200-yard freestyle against York Suburban High School at Dover Area Intermediate School on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011. Tilley won the race with a time of 1:59:01.
© 2011 by The York Dispatch. Dover Area High School swimmers congratulate fellow team members for winning the girls 400-yard freestyle relay against York Suburban High School at Dover Area Intermediate School on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011.
So that was fun.
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I used to run into the same problem when I shot college swimming at SMU — They didn’t have heat sheets until the end.
The most surefire way to make sure you know who is who is to shoot the “scoreboard” after each heat. Most pools will show Lane-Place-Time on the scoreboard at the end of each race. Then, just match up the results on the heat sheet to the photos of the scoreboard to figure out who was in what lane.
So, if the heat sheet says little Sally Johnson placed fifth in the 200 IM, just go to your photo of the scoreboard after the 200 IM and find the lane that placed fifth… There is Sally Johnson.
I didn’t know college swimming did the same thing — guess I’ve been spoiled by the Missouri Grand Prix!
The paper always wants us to get photos of the winners, which is pretty easy to predict in swimming since they always assign the third and fourth lanes to the fastest swimmers — so I just do that. Scoreboard is definitely good to photograph for reference, though, and also a great way to be a placeholder so you know when the next race begins in your takes.