Hello? Is this thing on? Can anybody hear me?
Well, I'm going to post this here and hope for the best. Perhaps someone will read this and be able to help me, if only to suggest a better place to post this.
My 440lb 52-year-old fiance decided that if she is going to see her now 10-year-old daughter grow up she had to lose weight. Right. What woman doesn't want to lose weight?
'Awww, I love you babe, I don't care what you look like' says I, and meant it.
But what else can a man who wants to continue living say?
Andi, it turns out, was one of the few willing to actually do more than talk about it. She joined a Roller Derby skating team. COVID killed the sport as athletes wandered away to seek solitude. Then two years ago she dove down the rabbit hole. She started walking. Then started running. And kept running. And swimming. And biking. Two years into this odyssey she's a Competitive Weightlifter and an accomplished Triathlete, having won numerous weightlifting Personal Records and one State Record for her age group, and completed about 40 triathlons and marathons of various distances, including four 76.3-mile Half Ironman races.
Now she has lost 249lbs and is training for Ironman Lake Placid Triathlon, 140.6 grueling miles of swim / bike / run in under 17 hours, coming up in July '22.
I like pictures, especially of her, and never having used anything but inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras or the camera on my cell phone I wanted to up my game. If she's going to put that much effort into this I want to put in the effort to learn enough sports photography, get some decent gear and give her the quality pictures that her efforts deserve.
So I took classes, online and off. Bought some stuff. Talked to people. Bought other stuff. And practiced taking her picture. A lot. Swimming. Biking. Running. Weightlifting. Training. Competing. Living. Raising our daughter. Sitting by a campfire on the river bank.
And I learned that no two classes teach the same stuff. No two photographers agree. No two sports require the same gear. Stopping the action of her swimming from a quarter mile away early in the morning is very different than catching her flying by on her tri bike at midday is very different than immortalizing her running across a finish line at night. But I have to do all of that and not break the bank doing it.
I bought a few cameras, some lenses, upped my cell phone to get a good camera. I'm 66, disabled (leg amputee, broken neck) and stuck in a wheelchair so I can't keep buying gear no matter how much she deserves good pictures. My next purchases have to be smart ones.
So I will list my gear below. What I hope to achieve is a few quality pictures. A photo gallery documenting our incredible life and her amazing journey.
She gains many things for all of her unceasing dedication to rebuilding her body and her life, all of them intangible. No one knows who she is. She has no sponsors. Gets no recognition outside of her family and wants none. There is no money to be made. What she does want, what her goal is, is to hear six words spoken by an announcer as she takes her last step over a 140.6-mile race finish line...
''Andrea L******, you are an Ironman!"
With those words she will know that she took herself from barely being able to get off the couch to the top of one of the world's toughest sports challenges, the Ironman 140.6 Triathlon.
I want to be there with a fast in-focus camera when she makes her swim-to-bike and bike-to-run transitions, when she sails by on her incredibly flimsy tri bike going hell-bent downhill at 45 miles an hour on potholed mountain roads, and when she takes that final step. I want to capture her smile when she hears those words.
Sure, the course is lined with dozens of professional photographers capturing her all along the way. People who actually know what they are doing, who made the investment in education and experience and equipment. We will buy their packages as we always do and they will be amazing as they always are. But they are not ours. All I can contribute to Team IronPanda is to continue to be her driver, Supporter-in-Chief and photographer to the best of my ability. I want to continue to grow in photography enough to take that shot. I know that I have no clue what I am doing. I have no business buying the expensive telephoto lenses required. And I am not at all sure that I have the gear I need. I'm invested in Sony with my two a7iii bodies and various kit lenses so unless you can talk me out of them (the generic you, dear reader, whoever may have gotten this far and want to suggest) then I plan to stay with Sony.
And no, I don't want to rent gear because as many times as she says she's done after Ironman I know it's just not so. She's on a roll. It may be jumping off mountains or leaping out of airplanes but I know Ironman won't be the end of my need to take great pictures of her, so renting to try would only make sense if I thought I would learn anything from the trial. Renting instead of buying would make none at all.
I need your help. Check out the gear list below. Tell me what you would add, subtract or swap out for triathlon photography. Keep in mind that the cutoff is 17 hours, so she will be competing all day and well into the night, I will rarely be close to her and daylight to dark photography at distance changes needs. If you use acronyms make sure I can Google them to figure out what you are talking about please.
I know there is no perfect solution, no one camera and lens that will do everything, but if you know and do this kind of extreme sports photography please tell me what an amatuer can do to get close.
You made it this far? Amazing! Thank you!
Gear Bag:
Sony Alpha A7 III Cameras (2)
Sony SEL55210 E 55–210 mm F4.5-6.3 OSS Lens
Sony SEL2870 FE 28-70mm F3.5-5.6 OSS Lens
Sony SELP1650 E PZ 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS Lens
Altura Photo AP-305S 2.4GHz TTL Speedlite Flash
Altura Photo RT-305 Wireless Flash Remote Trigger
Altura Photo 2.4GHz TTL Speedlite Mount
Altura Photo Flash Diffuser Light Softbox
Powerextra Digital Charger
Sony NP-FZ100 Battery (3)
Veho VCC-A034SB Battery
Sony NP-FW50 Battery (5)
Arsenal 2 Pro
Canon Powershot SX40HS Camera
Canon BM-NB10L Battery (2)
Canon Digital Charger
Samsung S22 Ultra 512Mb Camera Phone
Case Logic Bag
Tripod 60"
Monopod
Portable Batteries w/ Type C out (2)
12v to 115v Power Inverter for charging things / running laptop in my van.
Windows 11 laptop
Amazing story, Ed! I've photographed some triathlons and would like to share some insights. Primarily composition is key. No need for new gear so far. As a sports photographer you want to plan your spots ahead. Depending on what you want to shoot, you want to be where action happens or background is calm etc. Always make sure to have the athlete's eyes in your picture and shoot from eye level (that's the most difficult for swim photos). You can try to use your camera from creative angles e.g. by tilting the monitor and shooting from very low. In my opinion, athletes look smart when shot from the ground. Don't know if you can achieve this but start looks cool shot from inside the water and if shore is flat I like to shoot leaving water while sitting or laying on the ground.
The second thing is good lenses. When shooting during low light situations, you inevitable want to use that expensive and heavy f/2.8 glasses. A 70-200 would be a good choice. If you just can't get close to the action, some lens like the Sigma 150-600 S would be nice. But try to hone your skills first before investing in gear.
Thank you! We are going to make two trips to Lake Placid for training, one with her coach and one with another 'bariathlete' (someone who also had bariatric surgery for weight loss and made it to Ironman Kona, the top of the triathlete events). Those trips will give me several days to drive the course while she trains, choose locations to shoot from and consider what each shot will require.
I have some ham radio gear I no longer use (https://www.qrz.com/db/w4aga) that I can sell and maybe trade a lens to get the Tamron 28-200mm F2.8-5.6 Di III RXD Lens for Sony E Mount that looks like it will give me the short focal lengths and the Sigma 150-600 S for the longer shots. With two Sony a7iii bodies and those two lenses I might be covered well enough for anything a beginner can do. With the race July 25 I plan to quickly select whatever gear I get and barely have time to learn those specific lenses. Again, any input is welcome! Thanks again
Regarding F2.8 glass: consider only the ones that have 2.8 throughout the entire focal range. That Tamron with f5.6 at 200mm collects only a tad bit more light than what you already have. It doesn't focus fast and doesn't give as much subject isolation (blurry background) as a 2.8 would. So it isn't worth it. As I wrote, good glass is heavy and expensive. If you can't afford it, you can try to find a position where the background is nice and even or far away like on a hilltop. If you are talented, you might want to experiment with panning shots. That would blur the background, too.