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I recently attended the Snowboard show at Tamworth Snowdome and of course took advantage of the opportunity to take some demo boards out for a ride, but also listened to Russ Shea from DopeShots talking about photography. He is one of the photographers for Document Snowboard magazine and put together a great talk. It lasted about an hour and covered both general photograhy hints and tips but also snow sport specific stuff.

My key learnings were about batteries (buy lithium batteries as they aren't as affected by the cold) about traditional sweet spots (1/1000th and f5.6 for film, probably 1/1000th and f7.1 for digital) and got a few more items for my shopping list - a fish eye lens, a light meter and a flash unit.

He recommended shooting on manual, and getting to learn how the camera responds in different situations. I must admit to being an Aperture based photography and I tend to leave my camera on this mode 95% of the time. I obviously need to kick this habit and experiment more. He also mentioned that film was a great way to learn as you were more inclined to try and get it right first time rather than shoot away and choose later. I've found it to be the other way round, and in my early learning days found in really helpful to take lots of shots and use the EXIF information to learn abut both technique and my camera.

He also mentioned the usefulness of flash at all times - to help the rider stand out. Another tip to take on board and trial more. One of the official photographers at Ash and Mitul's wedding also advised the use of flash to remove shadows from portaits, even/especially in bright sunshine (which I've been trying to do) so it looks like time to investigate in a proper flash unit rather than just relying on the on-camera flash.

My shopping list grows ever larger.