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Category: G’ville

2012 All-South women's physique competitor
Man, am I behind in my posts! I’ll try to make up some time here.

Shots from the 2012 All South, held November 3 in St. Augustine, FL, are up on the site.

Got there later than I should have, so seating options were more limited. I chose a decent seat in the middle so the angle gained me more accurate and consistent color balance but lost me an unblocked view.

I think what I really need is a 30-foot tripod. Or a radioactive spider with a bad temper.

Promoters Gene and Pete put on a great show as usual. This wraps up the 2012 schedule for me. And by the way, the preliminary unofficial run-it-up-the-flagpole uncertified unauthenticated first draft of the 2013 schedule will be going up on the site shortly.

Enjoy.

Daytona Classic 2012 women's figure competitor
Shots from the 2012 Daytona Classic, held September 22 in (where else) Daytona, FL, are up on the site.

The shots from the 2012 Southeastern have just started going up as well.

Yes, I’m even more behind that usual, if you can imagine such a thing.

I’m starting to get very frustrated by my image presentation software. It seems way bloated for the simple job it needs to do, and ever since I moved the site to a new server to get a static IP, the weenier (that’s a technical term) server has made even a simple upload of images into a major and time-consuming chore.

I’ve been coping by breaking tasks up into small, nested batches so one thing can run in the background while I’m working on something else, but it’s still a pain in the sphincter.

I’m looking at an alternative that seems much faster and lighter but still seems to have all the functionality I need. In my copious free time (hack gag) I have to see if I can port the Eos theme over to it; I really like having the different software packacges presenting a comparitively seamless look-and-feel (says the guy who hasn’t even finished converting his static pages to the Eos theme).

Oh, yeah, the show. Just another smooth Tony Curtis gig– he makes it look so easy, though I understand the evening show had its share of fun due to unavoidable external issues, but even those were handled (good work Arno!)

This photography is not my finest work; in particular I’m disappointed in the bad job I did setting the white balance early on– it’s just so hard to tell when it’s off until you can really see it on a full-sized monitor.

Some of the shots came our wonderfully, but *all* of the shots could have been better. The Southeastern shots came out much more consistently, and I’ll try to do the same at the Gainesville show this weekend. Enjoy.

Some fairly significant changes must have occurred; the name, time, promoter, classes, guest poser, Web site, and probably lots of other things have changed. I’ve updated the schedule on my site to reflect these changes.

As always: check with the official NPC Florida site and check with the promoter!

I hope to at least have the Daytona shots up before then… :)

Greater Gainesville 2011 figure competitor
Shots from the 2011 Greater Gainesville, held August 13, are up on the site.

I’m always surprised by how much bodybuilding talent is tucked away in the smaller boroughs across the state. While the show was small, it was well-run and the lighting was good.

I did get caught off-guard and only got a couple of (bad) shots of the lone heavyweight competitor, as he was on the far side of the stage from me and was sent off after the first round of compulsories rather than shifted to the closer side as I had expected– though that had happened in an earlier weight class and I should have been prepared. Even though the quality wasn’t great, I included them in the collection.

I read on Ian’s Facebook page that he is donating his proceeds from the show through August to the promoters to add to their donation to STOP! Children’s Cancer. So I encourage anyone who might consider purchasing a photo from the show to go to iajephoto.com as soon as possible.

Dexter Jackson 2011 FBB competitor
Shots from the 2011 Dexter Jackson Classic, held August 6 in Jacksonville, are up on the site.

I’m quite pleased with the color balance. The UNF theater used to be a pit but they’ve clearly upgraded their lighting.

This was a much smaller show than I expected; though the quality of the competitors was outstanding, I have to wonder if the bikini slash “physique” elements are drawing potential competitors out of the bodybuilding classes. Or it could just be the recession. Time will tell.

Next up: the Greater Gainesville! No travel required, woo-hoo!

Gainesville was a lot more pedestrian-friendly before they started trying to make it pedestrian-friendly.


Shots from the 2010 Ancient City Classic, held in St Augustine, FL on May 15, are up on the site.

I purchased a new medium-range lens and while the shots came out a bit dark, overall I am quite pleased with it. My only gripe: it zooms backwards (e.g. Nikon style) and that crossed me up all morning.

The venue has pleasing architecture and I’d rather hoped there would be an opportunity for a shoot outside, but… didn’t happen.