A few weeks ago I spent the Saturday again at Sawotta judging and photographing between the heats in which I was a judge. This year the event had moved to a new venue – the Savonlinna Ice Hall. The new venue had more space for the audience, but since it was a cool summer day no part of the venue was especially warm even though there was no ice to be found.
I have to admit that I enjoy the double role of judging and photographing functional fitness events. Sure I could live with just photographing, but only judging would find me somewhat frustrated during breaks since I would be annoyed with the missed photographic moments while watching heats. And also when tiredness starts to kick in (as it always does in long events like these), photography keeps me more alert even during the downtime.
This time I also managed to be quick and go through my photographs and do some quick edit quickly so that I could get them out to the world. It’s been fun to see my photographs show up on Instagram in athletes’ own feeds. That’s all the thanks I need for this sort of photography which is done to support the growing CrossFit community in Finland.
I’m also overjoyed that the athletes appreciate and share also the images in which they don’t look handsome and pretty. I guess all of know full well that the faces we make during grueling WODs will never be pretty or handsome…
From a judges perspective the events this year were well planned and easy to judge – well everything except the double unders which are always hard to judge… There were some challenges that came from the change of venue, but on the fly changes to how some things were handled solved those quite well and the ability of the staff and judges to quickly adapt to changes allowed even quick paced heats to be handled with limited amount of hassle.
From a photographers perspective the new venue was much better than the previous one simply because the white floor provided a neutral color when compared to the wood floor of the basketball court. Of course as is the case with any indoor venue, more light would have made photography easier but it was still a piece of cake when compared to shooting a gig in a small club ;)
Sprinkled throughout the post are some of my favorite photographs from the event. For the full set of over 200 or so, head over to our photogallery: Sawotta 2016.
