Summer gymnastics

A little birdie told me that, while the baseball pictures are interesting and all, some gymnastics pictures would also be appreciated.  Since I aim to please, here are some gymnastics pictures from the last few weeks.  If you are wondering why there are so many more pictures of April than Audrey, it boils down to me taking the camera to two of April's classes and one of Audrey's. 

Also, from a photography perspective, the gymnastics gym was a fairly challenging space in which to shoot.  The east facing room is on the second floor of an old building on campus.  It has amazing, huge windows which are about 15 to 20' off of the floor which bring in some great shafts of hard light, but the rest of the room is mostly decorated in dark blue tumbling mats.  This combination makes achieving proper exposure a bit of a challenge-- especially as the class moves around the room.  I was using evaluative metering last week and was frustrated with the results-- with the hard, intense light in the background, the foreground was often a stop or two under.  This week, I planned to switch to spot metering, but forgot to switch-- way to go.  Actually, the main reason I am writing this paragraph (besides to bore the reader with a subject he or she probably couldn't care less about) is to try to remember to switch my exposure metering next time I am in similar lighting conditions.  That being accomplished (I hope), I will now conclude this really interesting tangent. 

I just remembered one more cool photo feature of the building where the gymnastics class is held.  Taking up the entire middle of the second floor of this building is an enormous, oversized basketball court.  The court takes up the full depth of the building, so there are windows on both sides.  The north facing windows are made up of banks of palatial half-rounds that are probably 25' above the floor.  This place would be perfect for shooting a day game or just for setting up some interesting individual basketball pictures.  For the person looking for a location to take senior photos (who plays basketball) it doesn't get much better than this.