Almost a year to the day since the last post. A lot has happened since then, and anyone who read the previous post may have been left wondering how the Youth Nationals photos went. It’s not as exciting as the year between season 4 and 5 of Breaking Bad, but it does end well!

WE DID IT.

The remote trigger system WORKS!! Not only that, but it works GREAT!! We are now able to send two people to a 4-platform meet (provided there are no VIP shoots) and still cover every lift with standardized photos. I’m considering this as a huge breakthrough in weightlifting photography. Now, no matter which platform you are one, you will receive hundreds of photos that are no different than if you were on a different platform. We are able to easily manage, with some careful planning, every session so that the photos are uploaded within 5-10 minutes of each session! How, you ask? The answer comes later in “The Converging of Paths”.

START SMALL AND THE LEAN METHODOLOGY

I was ready to go all-in for the 4 platform 2017 Youth Nationals with the remote system. Ryan is a big proponent of the lean methodology which in a nutshell, means ‘test small fail small’. The process lets you test theories and systems in smaller practices so that if it fails it’s no big loss and if it succeeds, all that is left is scaling up. It’s a great way to lessen and mitigate risk. I’m paraphrasing big time here so read up on the lean methodology if you’re interested.

He suggested we do two platforms with the remote systems and two systems the traditional way, with one shooter per platform. It was definitely a good idea because we were also rolling out the VIP product in the same meet. More on that later in the post. I rented two 1DX cameras, two 85mm f1.8 lenses, and some extra batteries. I brought my two tripods and heads, powered usb hub, laptop, and bought all the cabling I thought I would need (mutiple USB extensions and stereo cable extensions). The triggers chosen were Canon’s RS-60 E3 model which fits in the hand easily and has the same feel and features of the camera’s shutter button.  There were also a bunch of adapters involved to get the triggeres to mate with the cable connections. Gaff tape went around every connection, and it still does. All cables were tidied up and taped down. Everything was ready to go and framed up, cameras set and focused.

That was the last thing I had left to figure out, the focus. Auto focus or manual? I tried auto focus, but with the lifters starting in different places and the constant movement, it just wasn’t working. Manual focus was my backup plan, and it came through big time. Basically, I set the focus on the center of the bar and then tape down the focus ring. Now, finding focus is not an issue and every photo is in focus no matter what. Win!

With this being the first time using the software in the big show, we had not yet come up with a filing system. All it was at the time was a folder on the desktop called “YOUTH DUMP” and all the photos from the two platforms went there simultaneously. Each photo name was prefixed with the platform color name, so after each part was done the photos were manually dragged to their final place. This caused some human errors but nothing we couldn’t backtrack and fix. All the photos were uploaded to their respective album manually as well.

We kept up with everything all weekend long, and the photos were a huge success. We decided that this was the way forward, and I agreed to create a case filled with all the support equipment that would be needed to support a 4 platform meet, since that is as large as meets get. The next week I dropped about $2500 on tripods, geared heads, cables, adapters, tape, a case, triggers, and anything else you’d need for 4 platforms. This was also to prepare the setup for my absence for the next 6 months while I was in Qatar.

After everything was together, I took it all across the state to Ryan’s house to show him all the parts and how to set it up. While showing the software, he saw all the details that I overlooked that would help name and organize the files better. He was able to greatly improve the filing of photos, and it’s what helped to lead to the auto-sort uploader.

TIME AWAY

In 2017, I had one more trip to Qatar planned as part of my day job. It was going to be 4 months and over the summer, with me arriving back home in time to go to IWF Worlds in Anaheim. Everything was on track until CENTCOM J2 cancelled my trip. The worst part is that I rely on the extra money earned overseas and was planning on paying off my truck with it. This was the second cancellation in two years. Feeling slighted, I went outside of CENTCOM J2 and saw what 6 month deployments were available directly with DIA. The same job was avaialble in the same place doing the same thing but for different people, so I applied for it and was selected (as expected). This new timetable went from 3SEP2017 to 1MAR2018 and meant I had to miss worlds in addition to being gone longer. It was a necessary evil though, since I had already planned on 8 months of extra deployment pay over two years (the first 2 months came from 2016 when a 4-monther was cut in half). This trip brought my longer term goals back on track, if only delayed a bit.

Joe was my choice to cover the meets while I was away, and he did a great job handling them. He covered World’s and shot some amazing photos throughout the week! The American Open at the Arnold was a true stress test of the system with all four platforms in an odd configuration and a very large number of lifters. Ryan’s new naming scheme for the photos made the process that much smoother.

I had the privelege of coming back to well kept equipment, and a big thank you to Joe and Ryan for taking care of the gear!!!

THE CONVERGING OF PATHS

Getting the photos uploaded in a timely manner has always been our goal from the start. Back then, we promised to have the photos up same-day, even though it rarely happened. I can count on less than one hand how many times I’ve been able to do that, even though the quantity of photos I took were usually quite high. Three things came together to make it possible for us to upload a snatch portion of a session before the clean and jerks even started: 1, The photos were ready and organized immediately; 2, The uploader on the site is much speedier and has modifications; and 3, Internet is avaialble.

In order to have the photos ready to upload immediately, I had to reluctantly switch to JPEG shooting vs raw format shooting with editing. This forced a fundamental photography principle to be applied to our photos: Get everything perfect in-camera. This is, or should be, the goal of every photgrapher that wants to continue improving their skills. Relying on editing software to produce your photos is not entirely photography. Yes, getting certain color details where you want for an artistic shot will be necessary in editing to acheive the vision while doing high speed sports photography where there is little to no control over lighting. Everything else, like framing and exposure, should all be handled in-camera. This basically means hold the camera better and understand your light meter. Framing and exposure are easily the two aspects of photography that you have complete control over when taking a photo, and constant practice and self-evaluating will get you to the next level. An easy way to self evaluate is to edit some photos and write down all the changes made. Did you brighten it? Did you adjust the framing with crops and rotations? Did you miss the focus on an important shot? Put tally marks to the changes you make and see which are the top two adjustments. Can you fix all that with better photo taking or is it something that can only be done in editing? If it’s something you can do while taking the photo, practice over and over until the changes are second nature. Repeat this process over and over until you are better.

Okay, got sidetracked there… back to shooting in JPEG. Gotta get it right in-camera, and I went through a lot of color and contrast variations to get something that I thought would look good. We did have an advantage here, and that would be the cameras would sit on tripods and would be level on every shot. Framing got a little harder, because everything had to be a comprimise. If the lift is perfect and the lifter starts and finishes in the same spot, that’s great… framing will be spot on. If they walk forward, as lifters often do, would the framing still look good? Answer is yes, with my new procedure for camera and tripod setup. There is a lot of left and right tweaking, but what ends up happening is some very nice symmetry on our laptop screen showing all the cameras.

Exposure settings can be controlled from the laptop, and I prefer a high shutter speed. 1/800th or higher works great since it freezes the highest speed motion, like the tips of hair or the ends of the barbell when dropped. Also, it captures any chalk spray or dust in the air as well much better than a lower shutter speed would. This type of speed requires a higher ISO, and the Canon 1DX handles 8000ISO very easily. For aperture values, f2.5 has been working very well to keep the lifter and bar in focus, with a nice separation blur of the background. In the past I was renting the 85mm f1.8 lens, but it didn’t match the quality I could get with the 1.2L version and have switched to the the 1.2L as the only lens used. The larger elements in the lens lets in much more light, and the pictures look that much better than before.

We’re almost halfway through explaining the 1st of the three converging things… the other half of getting the photos ready immediately was the organization of the photos. In the last post, I mentioned that transferring photos could take longer than the available time to do. The good news is, we don’t have to do that anymore! The camera controlling software allows us to record directly to the PC storage. Not only that, but we can customize the file tree and what folder a photo will go to when taken.  We are now able to immediately have our photos organized in a simple file tree. This comes more into play later, as well as how the files are automatically named.

Now on to the uploader on the site. In the first version of the site, Ryan did a great job and the uploader worked as advertised. Drag and drop, and watch it go. Only problem was that it was slow. The internet speed didn’t matter, because once it was uploaded it had to be processed at the server and that sometimes too 5-10x longer than the actual upload itself. We made due with it, but after a long stretch of a lot of programming work Ryan recoded the entire site and rolled out version two with all-new features, including a much faster uploader. Before, only 4 photos would go at a time with the rest in-queue. Now, it will upload 8 photos at once and the processing part is a million times faster than before. A photo will process faster than it is uploaded! With this new system, we can upload 1000 photos in less than 5 minutes! GLORIOUS. Sound good? It gets better. I was always wanting an auto-uploader to monitor a folder and upload new photos as they were taken. This is still a goal, but we were able to meet in the middle and come up with a great solution. Ryan asked if the photos could be named with the album number as a prefix. My answer was YES. When an album is created on Lifting.Life, it gets its own unique number. Let’s say, album 1577 for Women’s 48kg B session snatch as an example. This is a number that can be known before the lifts occur by creating all the meet’s albums prior to its start. Before that session starts, we go into the settings for the camera shooting that platform and change the name of the naming prefix to “{album number} -” and then anything you want afterwards. I usually include the platform color and can even put in the name of the session to help if something goes wrong. It will look something like this: “1577 – Red Platform – W48BSn”. This will give each file that prefix, and then a number aftwards which is also customizable. We have ours set to a unique photo sequence number followed by a timestamp. The final filename looks like this: “1577 – Red Platform – W48BSn – 8372 – *a timestamp*”. I can’t remember what the timestamp looks like right now 🙂

With the album number prefix in place for each album, Ryan was able to make an auto-sort feature in our uploader. It looks at the prefix and places the photo in the corresponding album. It works flawlessly. The only mistakes would come from human error, but again with proper planning and annotating, almost all mishaps can be alleviated. This comes in especially handy if there is very slow or no internet at all at the venue, but the internet at the lodging is decent enough to upload. We can drag and drop a day’s photos to the auto-sort uploader and let it run all night. We’ve been lucky so far with fast upload speeds at recet venues though.

And that is how we are able to have your snatch photos uploaded before some of you even start warming up for clean and jerks. It’s easily one of my favorite things about the new photo system and lets us deliver on our promises, and then some!

2017 YOUTH VIP

This was the year and the meet we rolled out the VIP program. In reference to the lean methodology, we kind of did a real skewed version of it for the program. At the 2017 Senior Nationals, we did a test VIP with one of our top Florida lifters, Zach K. It went well, as expected, and was the only one we did to see how feasible it would be.

For Youth’s, an email was sent out from USAW to all 800 or so registrants (basically, their parents) promoting the VIP package. We got over FIFTY preorders in two days. It was insane. Viv (Everday Lifters) and I covered all the VIP packages, some with 3 to 4 lifters going at once over two platforms. We covered two platforms each, simultaneously. I shot with a Canon 5Dmk3 and 1DX with an array of prime lenses. It was a ton of kneeling, running, and shooting. Needless to say, it was the most exhausting photo work I’ve ever done but it was highly rewarding and worth it because the people buying the packages loved the photos, and it made me a better photographer. Mark it as another success!

PIVOT POINT

The success of this meet meant the future success of LiftingLife, and we succeeded in spades. From here on out, we will be able to offer so much more! Standardized photos means everyone can make a sequence poster. VIP packages means everyone can have many photographs off the platform. One person operating two stationary platform cameras means another person can shoot handheld photos.

There’s still more to come as well, stay tuned!!!