Skateboard NI - 2nd Annual Jam at Bridges skateboard park

I was invited (ok - I blagged an invite) to photograph this skateboard event in Belfast courtesy of Skateboard NI. This was my first time shooting skateboarding and that raised the issues of timing and knowing when to shoot to catch the tricks/stunts. This was balanced against the fact that it was so bright and sunny that there was no way I would be using flash, so I could (if i wanted to) get into "spray and pray" mode.

I caught this shot when I was getting my settings right (generally shooting at 1/1600 - 1/2000, f2.8 - f3.5 and ISO at 200-400) having noticed this guy jumping up and over the rim of the main bowl in the park. I legged it down and was lucky that he did it again.

The event involved three/four sections staged at different parts of the park. Each had slightly different demands in terms of finding the right angles and avoiding street lights, fences and so on. Some of the angels involved getting in the way of flying skateboards and I managed to get hit three times. The last, on my right knee, was pretty damn painful and involved a day of icepacks and painkillers to clear it up.

The under 16's competition was impressive; the over 16's competition was simply mad. Bodies hit the ground, boards were broken, tricks were tried over and over again until they worked. The sheer dedication of the skaters was something else - lots of bruises and only one (thankfully) trip to hospital in an ambulance.

The best shots definitely came when I was prepared (or stupid enough) to get as close to the action as possible and as close to the tricks as I could get. I ended up with a mix of close stuff (above) using a 24-70mm lens and shots taken using a 70-200mm lens (below).

The other thing which seemed to work well was to get low and shoot up, although this was what got me whacked all three times. Only afterwards did it dawn on me that I was also risking some pretty expensive camera gear for the sake of a half-decent shot.

All in all, another interesting experience and one which I would be quite happy to repeat if given the opportunity.

Flags

Anyone who has been keeping an eye on the news here in Belfast will be aware that the subject of flags has been a bit of a hot topic over the last two weeks. The city council's (democratic) decision to remove the union flag and only fly it on designated days throughout the year led to protests, violence, death threats against politicians, road closures and a great deal of bad feeling all round. The flying of the union flag is contentious because half the population see it as confirmation of their Britishness while the other half view it as triumphalism and are offended by it. Today we had around 1500 people gather at city hall to call for peace; yesterday people turned up to pray and hold hands in a ring around City Hall.

I stay away from politics generally and don't feel like using this post as a vehicle for my own views. My own thoughts on the whole matter are more to do with my nagging feeling that there are much more important things people could be protesting about such as benefit cuts, cuts in public services, pay freezes for those in work, rising prices and rising taxes, increases in the numbers of people living in poverty and that these things have more of an immediate and direct impact on everyone who lives in Northern Ireland.

Hence, the wee men were brought out.