In order to grow an archer, you have to give it an abundance of water, some muddy soil and after that a bunch of sunlight. I think that also describes the 5 Nations field competition at Sint-Oedenrode this year.

The Saturday didn’t start quite well, but mostly for the organization. From what I’ve heard they had a big leakage in their range and in the field many targets floated away or drowned. As a resolution they moved about 16 targets of both courses around and after a while they even took 2 targets out of the scoring, because if you wanted to get to the target, then the water could rise to halfway your knees. There was an archer who went in the water to check and the water went up to almost the height of his hips!

On the yellow course there were two targets where you’d get wet feet. One other target was completely flooded and they took it out before the competition started.

This was my first competition where I only went as photographer. I LOVED it! I didn’t set my camera correctly when I got there, but after a few shots I managed to get some settings that I liked and which my photos turned out nicely with.

When Tine packed her stuff and I got my camera gear in the car, we wanted to go but of course, the field was muddy. About 5 cars got towed off the field before I was able to drive off. Luckily I got a good piece of harder ground which wasn’t too bad and with a low speed, I was able to get off the field without being towed.

The Sunday was nice. There was plenty of sun and a nice warmth with it. The day started better than the day before. The practice range was open, but there was only 1 target without a target face.

I started with the group on target 4 on the red course. It started off a bit cold, but when the sun was high enough, my jacket went off immediately. At 9:15 AM the fire cracker went off and people started shooting. For a few targets I was able to get some nice shots of the group and after that I moved on to targets with other groups.

This was one of the first times that I really played with the manual function of my camera. I think it went pretty well, but I still got a ton to learn there. The lens I used had an f5. For next competition I’ll use the custom presets more, to quickly switch between camera settings. Now I mostly played with the shutter speed and sometimes with the aperture. The ISO I kept on 100-200.

It was a shame that targets 14 until 19 were moved towards the practice field, this meant for the archers that they had 6 targets (1 loop) with almost the same target conditions, but it did give me the opportunity to make some cool shots since I got to be almost in front of the archers.

Around 15:15 we were done, Tine packed her bow and around 16:45 we went back home, satisfied and tired.

There were some flaws in the competition this weekend, but there were also nice targets and many photogenic people 🙂

View the photos on my Flickr page.