Sports? I don’t do sports! I don’t attend sporting events so how can I photograph them? Oh wait, I guess I do. Sometimes.
Sky-diving:
My husband used to throw himself out of planes. He called it fun. I called it suicidal. I asked, “Why do you throw yourself out of perfectly good airplanes?” He said, “Because they’re not perfectly good airplanes.”
Every summer (COVID years excepted), we join our Montana friends for their annual skydive weekend. After hanging out with them (pun intended) for several years and hearing them rave about the thrills of sky-diving, I decided I had to try it.
Yep! I harnessed myself to a tandem master and threw myself out (actually, he threw US out) of a not-so-perfectly-good Twin Otter at 13,000 feet. Fifty-five seconds of free fall, plummeting earthward at 200 miles per hour. Five minutes under canopy, floating feather-like before touching terra firma. My conclusion: Been there, done that, don’t need to do it again. But it certainly got the adrenaline pumping.
Winter Olympics 2010, Vancouver BC:
We hadn’t planned on going to the Olympics. We were perfectly content to stay home and watch everything on TV. After watching the first night, we said, “That looks like fun! Let’s go!” We called a friend, “Dust off the hide-a-bed.” The next day we drove to Vancouver. Absolutely no regrets. Everyone was there to have fun. Except for the athletes, they were there to win.
Lots of other things to do at the Olympics, like see the exhibits of ancient sports equipment (try using these!):
Clockwise from bottom right: Ancient curling rock, ca. 16th century (Scotland, surprised?); speed skate blades, ca. 1780 (Holland); speed skate blades, an 1852 copy of 1452 original; bone skate blades, reputed to be 2000 years old (found in London, England); iron skate blades, 1780 (Holland)
#CameraChallenge #Sports #Skydiving #Curling #IceDance #WinterOlympics #AntiqueSportsEquipment #MargaretGHanna
A Prairie Perspective 
Another very thoughtful post Margaret, thanks for taking the time over it. Your opening paragraph was what concerned me about this weeks theme, but you’ve thought your way around it, next weeks will be easier, promise!
There is no way I’d throw myself out of an aeroplane…… crazy, but people say that about my ice climbing 🤣. Your range of images from the Olympics is very interesting ….. action from the sport itself plus artefacts, I wouldn’t have thought of the latter even for my own sports such as ice axes, ice screws etc so one up for you 👍👍👏👏
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Thanks. Your challenges are great incentive, not just to search through figurative piles of photographs but also to create a way to present them as more than just a series of images. Looking forward to the next one.
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Thanks Margaret, I have wondered if my title or hashtag should have been more like challenge your brain etc because in these pandemic times challenging your camera, may have been inadequate as a title. So, a little warning for research, peruse still life and macro. Real macro! I’ll say no more 😉
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Dr. B., I might have to skip your next challenge. My little camera claims to have a macro setting but it is not very macro. If I have any, it would be among my 30+ years of 35 mm slides, and I have no slide scanner (about to rectify that right now!). Who knows, maybe I find something (or get my camera to do macro as I think it should). Stay tuned.
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You’re a better man than I am , Gunga Din! There is no possible way I would ever jump out of some hooky little plane! Not included in my definition of a sport, never mind fun??
David
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You’ll notice I said I’m not doing that again. Once was quite enough. Guess I’m not the suicidal type.
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Wow, I admire you for taking that jump. I’ve often thought I’d like to try that but I have an awful feeling I’ll get up there and just refuse to go which would be so embarrassing!
How interesting too that you posted about the Winter Olympics. I focussed on the summer ones in London for my response, as I loved going to those, so I can imagine what fun it must have been to see these events!
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Thanks. Before I made the tandem jump, I had to watch a video about it. As I saw the tandem master and his “victim” hanging out the door before leaving the plane, I thought, “Oh, there are trust issues there.”
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My daughter’s reward for earning her US Army Ranger tab was to take 65-year-old me skydiving. Never offer such an incentive to a determined person. But I loved it! … once the plane stopped its sharp ascent and the instructor cartwheeled us out of the perfectly good airplane, that is.
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It is definitely a thrill!
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Can’t say I have any desire to jump out of a plane but I often dream of flying so I feel like maybe I should?
Also we didn’t do the Olympics this time (did 88 in Calgary) as the cost was so prohibitive in Vancouver and I kind of regret that we didn’t go.
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If we hadn’t had a friend with a hide-a-bed in Vancouver, I doubt we would have gone. We didn’t pre-book tickets, either. we’d go to a ticket booth late morning or early afternoon and ask, “What have you got?” They always had tickets. So glad we saw Virtue and Moir’s ice dance performance, it was electrifying. As for sky-diving, I don’t regret having done it, it was quite a thrill.
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