lucas-photo.com

Shots from the 2008 Tampa Bay Classic are being posted to the site.

Originally this show wasn’t on the list. It’s a traditionally large show, and one which can run long, plus it’s not far from Ian so it’s practically guaranteed that the show will have photo coverage.

And yet some positive things about the show kept nagging me. I recalled the high-powered lighting, and the gorgeous blue background, and the seating that allows for decent shooting angles if you arrive early (and one huckster actually tried to talk me out of my seat this year, but that’s a story for another time).

I also recalled that the promoter strongly prefers for the bodybuilders to do at least a shortened version of their routine at the prejudging. That makes life a very great deal easier for me, as I’m certain to see each competitor at least twice: anyone I miss during their routine, I can pick up in the comparisons.

About halfway down, somewhere near where the Florida Turnpike meets I-75, I had an epiphany.

It was obvious in retrospect. Good epiphanies usually are.

I had been trying to choose which shows to attend to based on parameters like driving distance and calendar dates– aspects that were actually pretty irrelevant to the quality of the shots I get.

I realized that, if I’m going to lever my happy carcass out of a comfy bed at zero-dark-thirty in the morning (or fork over a day’s wages to a legalized pirate trolloping hotel rooms if I want to stage locally the night before), drive one to three hours to get to the show, unload another wad of cash for gas, parking, meals, admission, and miscellaneous, drive one to three hours to get back home, then spend *another* four hours of my life editing and posting the photos…

… if I’m going to go through all that, then, quite simply, I want to go to shows where I can take good photos.

Period.

It doesn’t make sense to do this any other way.

I’m happy that I went to the Tampa show this year. I hope you’ll enjoy the shots too.

Shots from the 2008 Gateway Classic in Lake City, Florida are up on the site.

The color consistency is to cry for, which at least accurately represents the lighting at various points on the stage.

Judging, like photography, is a visual art, and the impact that good, even lighting has on the equitable presentation of competitors cannot be overemphasized.

(Well, actually, it can. You could say something like, “If one guy’s in shadow and the other guy’s in good light, plague and pestilence will reign upon the land!” and you’d be completely out of the ballpark and no one would invite you to parties any more. But good and balanced lighting is still *very* important.)

Apropos nothing, if the price of gas stays the way it is, I’m going to have to cut some of the shows from the plan this year.

Shots from the 2008 Wheelchair Nationals/Sunshine Classic are up on the site.

I’m quite happy with the shots, for the seat I chose. I put a lot of the things that I learned at the February RMSP seminar up in Jacksonville to good use.

The giant white CJ banner fouled the white balance in the shots if a competitor moved, or was placed, entirely in front of it. Most shots I shot slightly off-center to keep a certain portion of the banner in the frame for white balance, then cropped it out in post-processing.

I left the show early.

More specifically, I had to leave before the prejudging was complete because I had other obligations. The show started an hour late, and ran at a pace I can only call moderate to slow. No useful explanation was forthcoming for anything.

Maybe I was grumpy because it bumped lunch so far back, or maybe I’ve been spoiled by really well-run shows of late, but after a while it gets to feel just plain insulting– and I’m *used* to a bit of delay, Bob only knows what the first-time spectators thought.

Everyone got shots, though, and I got to my next stop on time.

The official 2008 NPC schedule is out, so I verified, expanded, and corrected the search page.

I’ve been working on a new view of the calendar but it’s barely our of pre-alpha stage– it doesn’t yet handle multiple shows on the same date, for example. If I can ever clear the decks of backlog I’ll add “download to Outlook” and/or “download to iCal” functions and let someone else worry about the calendaring.

Also, on the main page, I updated the summaries to pull data directly from the blog, based on whether or not the blog post is slugged with the “site update” category. That will save me updating the information in two places, as I nearly always give site update details in the blog anyway.

As an aside, it’s reassuring to see so many contests now having their own individual information sites on the Web. I think soon we’ll see that become a requirement, and following the logical progression, a centrally-hosted service.

Some change on the host has caused all of the bodybuilding contest pages to break. I’m looking into it and will get the pages back online as soon as possible. Thanks for being patient.

Update: One of the environment variables I was using to calculate image names was no longer available. I worked up a fix and luckily I was able to use _sed_ to do mass changes, so I had everything working again a few minutes later.

Please let me know if you see anything broken!

The skeleton of the 2008 NPC schedule is up; I’ll be filling in details as they become available.

Of course a reminder that the only *official* source of show information is the Florida NPC Web site.

Follow-up, Jan 03: I added some more info to the pages, also rebuilt the tables and updated the code to separate out the show Web site information from the “Other Info” field.

The last shots from the 2007 All-South are up, and that completes the 2007 season. (*whew!*)

As I mentioned, I went back to shooting the way *I* like to shoot at this show, and I am so much happier with the results I can’t even describe it. I hope you enjoy them as well.

Sanction Saturday went well; as usual I missed details on a couple of the shows because the room is noisy and the session goes quickly, but I got enough to put together a rough draft of the proposed 2008 schedule and I’ll have that up in a few days.

As always I was floored by the selfless attitudes of IFBB pros Dexter Jackson and Darrem Charles. Their love for the sport is unbelieveable and their willingness to help anyone is just what Florida bodybuilding needs.

Some more great news is that bodybuilding will return to Gainesville in 2008; the First Annual Greater Gainesville show is scheduled for October 18. I plan to do it, or train up for it at a bare minimum.

Now to the backlog of shoots…. :)