Oh man! Let me tell you, nothing feels as foreign as the first tournament of the season. You probably already know this if you play disc golf, but in a different light, taking pictures today presented its own challenges.

During the winter I went out and photographed local courses, but I did not photograph any people during that time. So being outside today with the warm weather, lots of sunshine and people/motion to photograph - it felt like the most bizarre thing. Even the weight of my camera bag felt out of place. It was all so surreal and yet very refreshing.

This tournament, Fraction Run 3 hosted by Dellwood Disc Golf was held at the Canyons disc golf course, the current #8 course in the world according to UDISC.

The air was dry, the wind was blowing and the sun was hot (I feel a little sunburned now). A perfect 60-degree spring day. It was a 2-day tournament but I only came out for just a few hours on Sunday afternoon. This was a practice round for me.

It felt great just to read the light in camera. I had one hiccup in the beginning, I couldn’t switch my Canon EOS-R over to silent mode because the “anti-flicker shoot” was enabled, I don’t even know what that is, but I figured out how to disable it and move on to silent mode.

While I have had this camera for over a year and a half now there are still some things on there that I never use, so in hindsight it was a good thing this happened - and a great reminder to catch up on the manual again.

The one thing that I was most excited about today, besides seeing all those happy people, was the long casting shadows that were around at 3:00pm. Shadows create such an interesting drama on the day. I focused on contrast, so behind the camera I exposed for the highlights (the brightest spot in the frame), and stopped that down 1 or 2 stops (depending on the situation).

When you are editing, you can always pull shadows back. But if you over expose the highlights, you will never get that detail back in the image.

This was also entirely new for me, I had always used tracking autofocus during tournaments but I tried one spot focusing instead this time. I did this because you can get a sharper image this way and on a practice day, why not?

A few other things that caught my eye out there: Dellwood Disc Golf! The expansion of the shop is amazing, and the branded scoring tent and flags - absolutely amazing! I feel like every time I visit, you can see just a small fragment of the future of disc golf in the now. It is a very beautiful thing.