Commack High School Varsity Gymnastics vs. Half Hollow Hills
Gymnastics is always fun to photograph. On the one hand, you only have to focus on one athlete at a time, which makes things a bit easier. On the other hand, they move very quickly. so following them in your viewfinder can be a challenge.
One more challenge is color correction. I always take a custom white balance to get me in the ballpark. The problem is the blue mats. They create a blue color cast on the athlete’s skin and any parts of their white uniform pointing downward. The color cast on the white uniforms can easily be corrected by desaturating the problem area.
Correcting the skin is a little more complicated. You can’t just globally change the hue of the skin tones because only the part of the skin facing the mat has the blue color cast. I created a custom style brush in Capture One that brushes on warm tones. I’ll set the brush flow very low so I can build up the amount of correction I need. This works without affecting areas that don’t need correction.
Just a word to the wise - this is a fairly large gallery so you have been warned. :-)
