Women's Gymnastics--It would be difficult to name a sport with more opportunities to capture awesome images than gymnastics.  With 90 seconds of non-stop action on the floor exercise and 70 seconds of nail-biting suspense on the balance beam, the opportunities are wide open.  The same routine will look different from week to week.  The gymnast may be good one week and absolutely awesome two weeks later.  The photographer's location and the gymnast's starting point on floor can dramatically change the look of the images from the same routine.  The emotion from the crowd can influence the feelings, emotions, and attitude of the gymnast.  Many times, the images will actual reflect that emotional atmosphere at the meet.  Sometimes the crowd is in the background and a family's exuberance and excitement for the gymnast's performance jumps out at the viewer of the image.

Uneven parallel bars and vault are much shorter routines with much more repetitive movements.  Of course, bars has the added problem of support wires, bars, and stanchions interfering with composition of the images and the ability to focus upon the gymnast.  Every event we cover requires a highly trained (and costly) photographer to be able to capture the images.  I have to decide what is the best allocation of resources in order to give you the best set of images while at the same time staying somewhat profitable.

We attempt to photograph every gymnast on two rotations at every meet we cover (with rare exceptions).  We follow a standard rotation of event coverage combinations:  Week 1-floor/beam, Week 2-floor/bars, Week 3-floor/vault, Week 4-beam/bars, Week 5-beam/vault, and Week 6-floor/beam.  We photograph the floor/beam combination twice as often as each of the others simply because that combination offers more variety and artistry than the other combinations.  There are several factors which can disrupt our normal rotation:  open weekends without a meet to cover, competition area setups which prevent us from positioning photographers in the right locations for an event, or adminstrative personnel for a meet requesting certain coverage.

For the vast majority of gymnasts, we will capture 40-60 images of each gymnast on each covered rotation.  Level 1 and 2 routines are very short and may have fewer images.  Level 9-10 gymnasts may have more images.  Vault will yield fewer images because it is a 5-second event.

Instead of limiting our coverage to the skills only, our photographers are trained to "tell the story" of your gymnast's routine.  We'll capture memorable moments like poses in the routine, memorable or unique body positions as the gymnast dances, the coach's final reminders before the routine begins, the salutes to the judges, skills, sequences of dynamic skills, hugs from the coach, and high-fives with teammates, among other moments.  

Remember that this is live-action photography.  While we try to minimize them, there will inevitably be some images from the gymnast's back, images that are out of focus, and mis-timed skills images.

Men's Gymnastics--Basically, the same considerations as with women's meets apply to men's meets.  Instead of looking for artistry and flowing moments, however, we are looking for moments that demonstrate strength, balance, power, or flexibility.  The coverage rotation for men's meets is as follows:  Week 1-floor/rings, Week 2-floor/p bars, Week 3-floor/pommel, Week 4-rings/p bars, Week 5-rings/pommel, Week 6-rings/floor.  The same factors as in women's meets can disrupt our rotation at a men's meet.  The competition area setup is more critical to our selection of events to cover at men's meets, because there are 6 events rather than 4.  The extra congestion is more likely to prevent the correct photographer placement at men's meets.