Flying Leap With Katana

[BT*ist]

The story: We had this internal competition at work to take a photo of ourselves with a little postcard-sized logo and slogan (refer note1 below)

So I grabbed my leather jacket, sunnies, black pants and katana and went to my parents' place where there's a great view.I gave my istDS to my Dad (who owns a Canon 300D, it must be said) and he took the shots (refer note2 below). I placed the postcard onto a tripod to hold it in place.

Anyway, in the hot afternoon sun I did about a dozen runs back and forth past the camera while my Dad took the photos on rapid-fire. We took about a hundred shots, all up. Most covering the run up, landing, turn and second pass before the frames per second on the DS began to slow. (Also, before I started to slow due to the heat!)

Some photos had light glinting off the katana, some had pretty good 'air' (especially ones taken earlier, before I got tired), and some had crazier katana poses (woo!). Some had more than one katana ('cause my brother has one, too!).

Resized downwards, and cropped into 1.8:1 widescreen, this is the one I thought was best overall (the dogs make the photo, I reckon!):


I didn't end up winning the competition: another guy had a photo taken of himself water skiing while holding the sign. But I still like my entry, and it was heaps of fun to create, so I thought I'd post it here.

Interestingly, looking at the photo you'd think I'm jumping towards the dogs. Actually I was running from the right of the photo to the left, and had swiveled to face the camera since Dad noted that in many of the previous ones I was being captured in profile. The dogs are just generally crazy and will run wherever they please. In this case they actually ran in a circle with the little one circling back later. The full sequence was:






Heaps of fun

note1 : nowhere in the competition terms did it say that the photo becomes the property of the promoter afterwards, so I think I'm okay. It was a staff competition anyway. Also, I have removed the logo and slogan from the postcard in the large image, but I think it's indistinct enough in the smaller photos.
note2 : I think copyright vests in both my Dad and I. In any case he said it's okay!

[Matt. K]

I'm impressed with the strength and stability of that tripod in the first pic! And your sense of balance is perfect. I would have liked to have seen you jumping towards the camera and a bit closer but the pics are nicely handled.

[nito]

Sorry, but I am so confused at what you are trying to capture.

[BT*ist]

Matt K : LOL! Yes, it does look like I'm standing on something - some people thought I'd manipulated the whole image (hence I showed them the sequence)

nito : heh. Yeah... wasn't sure whether too much background info was a good idea. Basically, most people took the postcards with them on holiday : Bali, Vietnam, Queensland, some snowfields, state borders, the opera house. My thought was just to create a 'striking' photo that just happened to feature the postcard, since I wasn't in a position to go traveling all over the world. In the end, I didn't win, but the CEO did give it a rap when he worked some entries into his quarterly results presentation (mine got its own slide, and the comment that it was one of his favourites).

[wendellt]

man this is cool
you should of slashed your competition
perhaps you should try one at night wearign black with white striped ansd use the strobe(repeat interval flash) on the sb800 to capture your movements that would be insane

[Glen]

BT, interesting series, great idea

[stubbsy]

BT. Cool, creative and well executed (no pun intended). And yes the dogs make it. And the back story made this even more interesting. Regarding copyright - you own it unless the competition had some terms that say you assign the copyright to them. I doubt this would happen for a work comp (since I doubt they'd even think that far ahead)