orienteering and photography

[70plus]

I endorse most of the contributions to this thread, and would like to think that pics of youngsters enjoying themselves with a map and compass will benefit the sport. Sadly, if the pics do attract newcomers, at a typical event they find a few dozen youngsters as pictured, apparently accompanied by grandparents and great-aunts and uncles. How do we fill the gap in the middle?

'Recruitment' to O almost ceased about the late 80's, and much of the membership at that time still keep the sport going. It seems ours is not the only sport (or nation) suffering this problem, and I don't really believe all the potential young-adults are doing more extreme things. So what publicity pics should we present?

[SeanC]

I don't know about the mid-80's, but recruitment to Orienteering is alive and well in some clubs. There are clubs who's membership and participation has steadily risen or at least not declined in the past decade. Unfortunately the progress is patchy and more have declined. Practical help for clubs such as a repository of good quality photographs for publicity will put more into the growing/stable category.

As an aside one of our members put a camera with a motion sensor at the final control* at a recent event. The results were a bit random, but at least showed movement. Not quite publishable but good fun and good enough to brighten up the DFOK website.

* could be left by certain not to cross walls or flower beds

[Jon Brooke]

I'm an event photographer. I take pictures of the LAMM, Rab and Highlander MMs.

Here's a set of my pics from the 2010 Rab MM. http://www.flickr.com/photos/30973426@N06/sets/72157624920888513/show/

My website is http://www.rightplacerighttime.co.uk

Getting pictures for use in advertising/editorial is a different kettle of fish to getting pictures of large numbers of competitors in order to sell to them direct.

The editorial style stuff I get from a MM is a bit of an add-on to my main job of photographing as many of the competitors as possible to sell via my website, but because of the long duration of the event I have time to do both (I also do the live online reporting at the LAMM).

It is pretty tricky to get great action shots from orienteering events for a number of reasons:

1. Most of the models don't look very acitve.
2. A lot of the terrain doesn't look great.
3. The models come from unpredictable directions at unpredictable speeds at unpredictable intervals.
4. The event is relatively short anyway, so you don't have time to mess about with different set-ups.
5. So far, no one's ever offered me money to do it, so like the OP, I might spend 20 minutes after my run taking a few pics for my own amusement or maybe the club website, but not really trying that hard.

Nick Barrable had a go at photographing some of the bigger events to sell pics online to competitors a couple of years ago under the CompassSport umbrella, but I don't think he bothers anymore - draw your own conclusions about orienteers propensity to spend money on such things.

Probably the best way to get decent action shots of orienteering would be to stage the shots. This could be done in the midst of an event in order to get an authentic, populated background.

Getty Images (and others) pay the photographer according to the usage of the images. I would suggest that the reason that there are no authentic O pics there is because there is no demand for them.

[RS]

A bit off topic and back to the old chestnut of recruitment.....we are never going to keep newcomers to lots of summer evening/ low key events if we don't have decent maps and planning What better way to put any one off than having difficulty finding 'hidden' controls in bracken and nettle infested terrain and using an out-dated map for a badly planned, not to guidelines course. (Rant over)

[SeanC]

Sounds like last night's event didn't go so well?

Certain formats like score events are more forgiving of old maps though. There was a Kent Night Cup a few years ago where a reasonable sized valley was missing from the map. Because it was a mass start score event, this was announced at the start and the event had other things to make up for this (plenty of banter and an after event pub). You can't get disqualified for missing a control on a score event, and you can always skip a control if it's in the nettles.

There's not much data on why people leave though. When our membership secretary asks the two most common reasons are injury (particularly for experienced orienteers) and "too many other things to do". There's lots of people who turn up for one or two events, don't join and never come back. Because they haven't joined us we don't know why not. Maybe lots of people just want to try different things, or there's not enough local events/activities to build on their enthusiasm/compete with other things in their lives, or the club doesn't offer enough coaching / social etc?

I suspect that at the local level we may be better off worrying less about the quality of the map and more about publicity, things that make people feel welcome and increasing the number of events. Would be nice to have some market research on what attracts and puts off newcomers and non-orienteers though.

[AndyC]

I suspect that at the local level we may be better off worrying less about the quality of the map and more about publicity, things that make people feel welcome and increasing the number of events. Would be nice to have some market research on what attracts and puts off newcomers and non-orienteers though.

Some people here already know that I have a bee in my bonnet about midweek events in that I sometimes go to events in areas that I don't know well and using the details on club websites I have difficulty finding them - sometimes driving around for a long time and giving up -leaving me annoyed and frustrated; the exact opposite of my intention. (I'm sure that a newcomer would give up much earlier than me)
Despite the low key level of these events we do have to make sure that directions on websites are clear (i.e. clear to a stranger to the area) and that we have enough signage to guide someone who is "near" to registration (after all signage is cheap and it might just attract someone to come along and see what it is all about).
I still find these events the most enjoyable form of the sport in general -even when one control feature doesn't exist, one is on a feature not strictly on the map (and about 10m from the centre of the circle), one control is definitely on the wrong feature and a "depression" is actually a hill -all "rub of the green" and the same for all

[Mrs H]

We are using posters to decorate our rather rustic barn for the SinS socials. These are 2ft by 5ft does anyone have any info for that rather splendid photo by Dave Best taken some years ago - would he mind us using it if someone could send me a good quality image? Also I would like some good quality urban shots if possible.

or any other really good shots of a 2x5 sort of shape!

you can send them to me at lynden (at) mado.org.uk

[Broken Ground]

Could anyone shed some light on who/where Mark Cheesman keeps his photos. Just opened CompassSport to find photos of me from the Southern Champs, which I didn't even know existed. Anyone know where I can find them

[LostAgain]

I have many photo's of "Broken Ground" and would hope you would not ecessarily think them personal

Send and email to BOF, they should be able to help.

[MIE]

Could anyone shed some light on who/where Mark Cheesman keeps his photos. Just opened CompassSport to find photos of me from the Southern Champs, which I didn't even know existed. Anyone know where I can find them

PM me and I will have a word with him and see what can be done