In July 2021 I travelled to Nelson to attend the NZ IPP annual conference I had booked in for a workshop on the afternoon before the conference started but that ended up being cancelled when Covid closed our borders and the Australian speaker could not attend.

That left me free to attend a jump park shoot south of Nelson organised by Andrew Reid from Panasonic.

Unfortunately heavy rain in the days leading to the shoot meant that we could not shoot we had originally been planned because it was too dangerous for the riders and also would result in damage to the course fortunately Nelson City Council had developed a hard track as well so we use that.

We positioned ourselves around the track trying to avoid getting each other in shots and proceeded to snap away. It was a little difficult achieving good separation of the riders background elements such as trees. most of the images were shot at 1/640 second F4 at ISO 400. the cameras subject tracking most reasonable although it held if you positioned yourself with a ride coming straight towards you

Once everyone was bored with the action shots we tried something different shooting the riders jumping directly into the sun. This meant increasing the shutter speed 1/1600 to expose for the sky and f11to create the star effect of the sun.

It was a fun afternoon with a subject completely different to my usual models.