Kayaking - NSR 2013

Ice Globe · 5 Mar 2013 at 18:55

Went to watch the National Student Rodeo last weekend. It's a kayak playboating competition held at Nottingham's whitewater course at Holme Pierrepoint.

Below are my favourites, a few more on my flickr.

#1

National Student Rodeo 03 by Ice Globe, on Flickr

#2

National Student Rodeo 12 by Ice Globe, on Flickr

#3

National Student Rodeo 24 by Ice Globe, on Flickr

#4

National Student Rodeo 20 by Ice Globe, on Flickr

#5

National Student Rodeo 02 by Ice Globe, on Flickr

Ice Globe · 5 Mar 2013 at 19:15

Here's a couple of the course if you're interested in the levels:

And some of the wider carnage:

Ice Globe · 5 Mar 2013 at 22:04

munge said:
Great photos! Love some of the facial expressions. It's that moment when the water is coming at your face and you have to remind yourself that it's okay, you're not going to drown...

From a technical point of view (for my learning) was there any reason you used f/10 rather than a wider aperture and lower ISO? Curiosity, that's all!

I wanted the camera in shutter priority mode with the aim of having a shutter speed of 1/1250 to 1/1600 to stop the motion of water. I set the ISO to various amounts throughout the day depending on the sunlight/clouds in order to achieve those shutter speeds.

The lens aperture varied considerably to match those requirements depending on how much whitewater and hence light I happened to be pointing at/zoomed to. So in an ideal world I would have preferred the lower ISO and larger aperture but I wanted to play it safe with so much quick action and variable light conditions.

munge said:
And how's number 5 got so much air??

Number 5 is a duo aka 2-person kayak; they've backed the boat into the stopper/wave to the right which uses the downward force of water to sink the back and raise the front. There could also be a fair amount of water in the boat by that point which further sank the back.