Digital Photo Gallery of Ted Szukalski
Fine art digital photography, photographic news, reviews, articles and resources.

Australian Championships 2008

You may have noticed I have posted less photos in last two weeks. This is because I was very busy photographing best speed skaters in Australia. Firstly, in NSW Championships and last weekend in Australian Open Speed Skating Championships 2008. These two weekends resulted in close to 5000 photographs. Each had to be processed and tagged with competitors helmet numbers for easy search. This was a very rewarding but very tedious task.

Pictured here are (from right to left) Ben Southee (344 Australian Champion), followed by 164 Lachlan Hay and 138 Jeremy Beck.

Ben Southee - NSW Champion 2008

Here is another NSW short track speed skating champion for 2008: Ben Southee. Ben seems to win his races without an effort which must be very demoralising for his opponents.

A reminder for parents and skaters alike: You photographs are available in our on-line store.

Alix-Myra Anderson - champion speed skater

I have been the official photographer for this year’s NSW Championships 2008 in short track speed skating. I have been writing on the subject of photographing the elite speed skaters for a while now. The nature of the venue with low light and its top down direction combined with bright ice, high speed an non linear direction of the races makes is a very difficult to photograph event.

I have taken close to 1500 photographs. There are many pin sharp photos from the morning session where a side window let in a lot of natural light. The later session even at high ISO resulted in some motion blur images. This is almost expected for this sport. All in all I think the event was very successful.

Here is a photo from a later session thus with a small motion blur of this year’s NSW female champion speed skater Alix-Myra Anderson. I was very impressed by Alix’s style and commitment. This girl knows how to skate.

A reminder for parents and skaters alike: You photographs are available in our on-line store.

Grant Hester - Sprint Cup, Erina 2008

Last night during Sprint Cup at the Erina ice rink my son, Sebastian managed to take first place in sub junior category. Needless to say I am very proud of him. He has been training under a watchful eye of Andrew McNee since last November. Taking into account his brief involvement in short track speed skating I think this is an excellent progress.

Fatherly pride aside the night belonged to Grant Hester in his bright yellow skin suit. Grant, in this short track speed skating event, blitzed everyone and in the process posted what probably is the fastest 500m this year in Australia at 45.3s. Well done Grant.