My weekend was a messy mix of blessings and curses as I tried to fly out of the frigid but beautiful Winnipeg winter and off to Montreal for my next adventure. My flight out of Winnipeg was cancelled, needed a hotel for the night which the airline verbally said they would cover then refused when I sent them the bill. The blessing was that I ended up with a layover in Halifax, Nova Scotia which gave me a chance to join Cheer Blast 2019 for some photos before my next connection!

Cheer Blast 2019 is the first Nova Scotia competition of the season in Nova Scotia and is hosted by West Halifax Cheer and Scotia Cheer All-Stars jointly. If you’re interested in catching a Cheer event for yourself it is incredibly fun and a great photography challenge. Here is a link for competition dates listed by the provincial regulating body Cheer Nova Scotia.

On with the geeky camera talk!

I wanted to really try my best to freeze action and dialed up my shutter speed to 1/400 and left my aperture at f2.8 on my Tamron 70-200 f2.8 G2 and finally brought it all together with a massive ISO of 6400. I have never gone to 6400 before and honestly I was terrified of noisy photos. On my old Nikon D5100 I never pushed past ISO 800 but I also did not know as much about photography back then. With my new Nikon D750 I was willing to risk it and gamble the day away with friends and family cheering me on!

I was in time for late afternoon exhibition on Saturday afternoon and here are a few shots from the day. Not too many shots from me since I missed most of the event Saturday.

And here is a glimpse of what “Cheer Dads” look like. They are incredibly dedicated to their athletes and club!

Sunday I had much more time to shoot photos before I had to scoot to the airport. I was able to get my best cheer shots to date. I’m very excited to take the experience I gained this weekend and incorporate it into more sports photography in the future.

This was my first time using Back focusing with the camera. It was odd at first but then incredibly versatile! If you shoot with a DSLR and haven’t tried this yet, please look into it!

Questions I need to look into after shooting this cheer competition revolve around white balance mostly. I found color was way of in camera and Lightroom’s auto white-balance failed me as well. I would manually set by using a athlete’s shoe as a baseline and trying to finesse from there. Maybe I finally need to manually set with a card before shoot now. Another item I need to double check is what metering I was using. Chances are it was center weighted. Auto-focus mode for me was Dynamic area 9 point with lock on normal.

When all was said and done I found myself with 813 RAW files to edit and many team parents waiting as patiently as they could for me to edit. Luckily news for everyone except myself, my flights on to Montreal was cancelled, re-booked and then incredibly delayed. This gave me a good start on the 12 hours of editing I had ahead of me!

Most of the photos here are of a brilliant Cheer club called Extreme Athletics. They are one of the longest running Cheer clubs in Halifax who started back in 2001. They have a combined coaching experience of over 100 years which shines through in their athletes! The Extreme family has become a very close family to my own and I’m looking forward to many more chances to chronicle their achievements.

With this shoot behind me I feel comfortable enough that I could do some paid work at a competition now. Instead of trying to capture a full team I can focus on the individual’s part within the routine. Highlighting just the one athlete and capture them throughout the routine would be a rewarding shoot. Future dreams I suppose with hopes of buying a Tamron 24-70mm f2.8 G2.

I’m sleepy now and too tired to do anything else except add a few more shots. I have many favorites from the weekend. I’ll start with some fun ones of Instagram user @reasonswhymysistershateme and then I’ll just throw a bunch of random fun photos up for you to enjoy.

Thanks for cheering me on Extreme!

Sincerely,

Jeff ~ The RPG