While I love this blog, I now pretty much only write on my other two blogs: BirdingBlogs.com and 10,000 Birds - I would love to see you there!

Tuesday 10 November 2009

"Pray for Ice" ice climbing competition 2009

This last week has been super busy, Saturday I was at the Alpinmesse in Innsbruck all day (an expo all about Alpine Sport). Sunday was spent in final preparations for Monday's press event for journalists where we presented the new Swarovski Optik EL 42 Swarovision binocular - I will have to write about it some time this week for it truly is an incredible binocular. But back to Saturday...

Swarovski Optik had a stand in the Alpinmesse and I took along a pile of digiscoping stuff to take photos. Right in front of our stand was a huge big dry-wall for climbing set up for the 2009 "Pray for Ice" ice climbing (Eisklettern) competition.

For the most part I was a good 25m away from the wall so that I could be at a higher level. I tried to position myself to be able to get images that included the climbers' faces, which wasn't that easy.





These guys and gals were incredible climbers and their athletic ability was amazing. It was great to be able to get right up close and personal to the climbers in the photos - something that is rarely possible in real life.

These photos were taken with the Swarovski straight telescope (STM80HD), the TLS800 digiscoping adapter and a Canon EOS 5D II. Being in a relatively dark expo hall meant that it was often difficult to get sharp photos with such shutter speeds. But there were a few gems in the photos I did manage to take.

Happy digiscoping,
Dale Forbes

3 comments:

FAB said...

Super action shots Dale. I'm going to try out a similar set up using my older angled Sworo next week. Do you recommend a particular setting on the Cannon i.e. AV mode?
Cheers Frank.

P.S. Word verification was 'disco'..dancing on ice maybe!

Gaelyn said...

Great captures. I like seeing the total concentration on their faces.

Dale Forbes said...

Hi Frank,
If you use aperture priority, then the camera will obviously give you the appropriate shutter speed, but it all depends on the camera. If your camera does not like your T2 adapter then you may need to use manual mode and set the shutter speed yourself.

Dance on ice!

Hi Gaelyn, being so close to that deep concentration and prowess was incredible. As a normal spectator you rarely get to experience this...