SynchroNice / Third Edition / 2018

In Junior, team Skyliners had to defend their gold medal. Achieving a beautiful score of no less than 165.73 points , a whopping 15 points above their 2017 performance they continued the gold. Silver with 140.56 points went to the other US candidate, team Starlights closely followed by the bronze team Valley Bay Synchro from Finland, earning 136.26 points . Favourite up front in Senior… without a doubt team Skyliners Senior, but the fight for silver was maybe the most exciting. Skyliners didn’t disappoint and made a clean sweep of all the gold in the house, but it was a surprisingly strong team Berlin1 in their Free program that took over the 2nd spot after a prior strong short program by teamMiami University the day before. The Dutch skated one of their World’s qualifiers, but both disappointed a little in their performance and neither of them scored the necessary limit for a ticket to Stockholm. Before we show you the final results, we would like to remark the following… If there’s one thing we need as a photographer it’s light. Light is the most important ingredient for any photographer to capture our or any other sport at its best. Not all ice rinks in the world have good lighting… sorry, let me rephrase that, only a few ice rinks in the world have good lighting, but any Organizing Committee should do their utmost to make sure there is a maximum in light…that is, if you want photos and even video clips to look good. Unfortunately, lighting conditions in Berlin were not as good as last year because they didn’t use all lights, resulting in less photos and all photos containing a green or a red hue. Not very nice considering the effort and money we put in to our work, but it doesn’t help the sport either. People like to look at crystal clear pictures that are bright and colourful. Bright pictu- res make the sport look good and will attract new participants and more audience.  SYNCHRO NICE 101 One thing we personally like very much regarding our photography within the Synchronized Skating community is the traveling. As you all know, competitions are organized in some of the most beautiful spots in the World and we…We get to visit all these great spots. Sometimes they’re on the other side of the world and sometimes relatively close by… like beautiful Berlin. The German Capital hosting this year’s Cup of Berlin again of course and although the 2018 version wasn’t loaded as heavily as the 2017 version, it was still a great competition to watch.