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Swimsuit police on the job!

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by HanSenSE, Sep 12, 2019.

  1. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

  2. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    What’s cracking?
     
  3. jlee

    jlee Well-Known Member

    If a concerned parent took pictures of my daughter’s (or son’s, etc.) butt, I think I may finally get into one of these “real fights” typefitter talks so much about.
     
  4. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    I hope Alaska doesn't have high school volleyball players wearing spandex short-shorts, that official might DQ the entire sport.
     
  5. typefitter

    typefitter Well-Known Member

    Welcome.
     
    jlee likes this.
  6. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Back in the days I was running a one-man sports shop, some of our area teams offered both girls' swimming and gymnastics. Like all "minor sports,"
    the parent groups of both sports continually demanded more coverage. So I made a point to shoot every meet I could.

    Gymnastics was mainly timing in terms of the skeevishness of pictures. Several parents told me, "don't worry, anybody wearing a leotard knows people are looking."

    In swimming, the coach assured me that dark colored suits (black/navy blue) "obscured everything" and were perfectly appropriate.

    I shot a few meets and quickly found out that if you used flash (which you pretty much had to at indoor pools with 1980s lighting), when you developed the film and looked at the negatives, the suits became essentially translucent.

    So you had to be very careful taking
    photos in both sports -- judicious cropping was often necessary.

    And yeah, the skimpy-scanty volleyball panties are the same thing. I once had a mother-coach go into a heated rant about how the skimpy-scanty panties were the only "real" volleyball pants and only "city league old ladies" wanted to wear bike-shorts bottoms with longer legs (and no butt cheeks showing).
     
  7. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    This is why I hated running photos of women's gymnastics during the Olympics other that static medal shots, or women's tennis at Wimbledon with the must-wear-white rule.

    Many moons ago, I covered the state juco men's water polo tourney (it was in our town) and was chatting with the host coach when he pardoned himself, walked over to the other side of the pool and asked someone to stop taking photos. The shooter only took photos of the players while they were in a huddle during time-outs, he told me later.
     
  8. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    I suppose it should be noted that dark colored men's swimming Speedos also turn pretty much translucent when wet.

    And let's not even talk about wrestling singlets.

    The bottom line (ahem) is, if you're performing a sport before spectators in a skin-tight outfit, people are going to see what's there.
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2019
  9. Fred siegle

    Fred siegle Well-Known Member

    I run into a similar thing with our girls volleyball teams, especially the youngest girls. The rules say the shirt number has to be in the “center of the chest” but some of the girls are so small the shirts drop down and the number ends up closer to the middle of the stomach. If a referee points it out, I ask them why they are looking at little girls’ chests.
     
  10. Bud_Bundy

    Bud_Bundy Well-Known Member

    Way back when, our district gymnastics meet was held at a school where the mascot was a patriot. On the wall of the gym was an image of a guy holding a musket at his side. One of the photos turned in was a girl doing a backflip and, in the picture, was up in the air, her leg spread right in front of the musket. Our photo chief saw that one and, so he said, got rid of the print and the negative (this was before digital photos).
     
  11. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Doesn’t every paper have (or used to) the photog who somehow always gets photos like that?

    We had one who got a wild art of a college cheerleader at a car wash fundraiser holding a water hose and getting a drink. She was holding the hose vertically, so it looked like her grill was getting finished upon. Damnedest thing is it ran.
     
  12. NNDman

    NNDman Active Member

    Girls volleyball players in my coverage area never tuck their shirts resulting in some middrift shots on spikes. One heavy-set gal on one team was a hitter and I had to do some unique cropping if I used any photos of her.
     
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