I’ve been wanting to photograph Golden Valley’s Kienan Donovan for a long time. He is ranked #3 in California in the Shot Put with a season-best throw of 59′ 8″, but he has thrown over 60 in the past. I’ve also tried one other time to capture the power and grace of the shot put in one of my photo composites. The best at this event make it look like a dance.

The last time I attempted it was at the 2019 Arcadia Invitation. Natalie Ramirez, now at UCLA, was my subject that night. She makes the shot put look like a dance too. But that first attempt turned out so bad, I never published the image. The one above turned out much better.

I tried several different methods on a sequence of photos I captured during one of Kienan’s attempts at last night’s Foothill League Finals. Composite images require a bit of distance between shots to really shine. Long jump is the perfect event for composite images. And when you try to force the distance just to show the sequence, you loose a bit of the beauty, I think. I’m sharing the one below anyway, just so you can see what I mean. Who knows, maybe you will like the one below better. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.