Cheer Nova Scotia Provincials 2023

Before having daughters I always thought cheerleaders were a group of girls who did a simple dance and waved pom poms around on the sidelines at football games. I was clueless. Cheerleaders have their own sport, and it’s a very competitive one. When my youngest daughter asked to join cheerleading in 2019, I signed her up, and it is one of the best decisions I ever made for her. It’s a combination of gymnastics, dance and performance art and requires months of practice just to pull off a 2 and a half minute routine.

I photographed Cheer Nova Scotia Provincials 2023 at the Centre 200 in Sydney last weekend. Cheer is a challenging shoot because of the fast action and hours of holding a heavy telephoto lens. I took about 4000 images, narrowed it down to 600some and posted them on Facebook. Now for the challenge of selecting some for this blog post. Here they are. You can see hundreds more from the event on my Facebook page.

For the action shots I used a Lumix S5 and a Lumix 70-200 f/2.8 lens.