a local short track program. That quickly became an almost full-time job driving to practice, and with it, a renewed interest in shooting,” he explained.
Since working with US Speedskating,
DiNardo cites quite a few memorable highlights. “Being able to capture images of the Team at Olympic Trials. Watching J.R. Celski come back from his injury at Trials and then medal at the Games. Cap- turing stills for the Colbert Report. All of these are great, and will be memories I’ll carry with me, but I’d have to say that having the opportunity to get to know so many of our skaters on a personal level and capturing their improvements both during training and at events is probably the most rewarding part of my work with USS,” he recalled.
Steve Penland
The Wheaton (IL) based Penland, a teacher turned speedskating coach and masters speed- skater, has always been handy with a camera. As an Au- dio/Visual and Sci- ence teacher, Pen- land also coached
track and soccer, but really began to fo- cus on sports photography when his son and daughter began to speedskate. “This was pre-video, and many people found it difficult to shoot high speed events,” ex- plained Penland. “ With my camera at the time, I was able to shoot 3.5 frames per second and I began to photograph sports for local newspapers. It then evolved from taking pictures of my kids compet- ing, to shooting for other clubs.” After buying his first digital camera, Penland began to shoot photos of all the competitors at each meet he attended and posted them online for the skaters to download and share. Soon, Rob Multerer at the Pettit Na- tional Ice Center took notice, and asked Penland to shoot the Pettit’s major rac- es. “I was busy. I shot three to five im- ages of every skater competing and then sent out those photos to everyone in the meet,” he added.
While Penland has a website in the works, you can see some of his work on the Pettit’s website (
http://www.thepet-
tit.com/). Through his photography and coach- ing at the Pettit, Penland started follow- ing the careers of skaters that trained at Pettit. By the time the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games approached, local fans joined together to support Penland getting to Games to capture images of the hometown speedskating heroes. Vancouver was Penland’s first trip to the Olympics. And it was a memorable one. “Being at the Olympics and know- ing the skaters made it meaningful,” he explained. “When you are there seeing someone you’ve known since they were eight or nine years-old compete and re- alize that they are now Olympians, it’s pretty special.”
Jerry Search
A longtime coach, board member and US Speedskat- ing volunteer, Jerry Search is no stranger to the rink. The Califor- nia native, and re- tired Long Beach firefighter, most
recently spent 29 years as an adminis- trator and coach with the Southern Cali- fornia DeMorra club, and was Olympian Rusty Smith’s first coach (1991-1994). But his passion for photography began soon after he graduated high school. “I’ve been taking pictures since I graduated high school, but when I got involved in coaching in 1984, I got video camera,” he explained. “I occasionally tool pictures but didn’t have enough money for the proper lenses to capture our sport.” In 2001, Search bought his first digi- tal camera. “It made finding pictures so much easier,” he added. A year later, Search purchased that better lens he had his eye on to capture short track. Coaching and photography opened up a new interest for Search – website de- velopment. He started the Southern Cali- fornia Speedskating Association website
in 1997, and later went on to create the National Speed Skating Museum and Hall of Fame site
http://www.national-
speedskatingmuseum.org, which he still maintains today. “Once I developed the Museum and Hall of Fame website, I decided to move all my pictures somewhere they could stay forever,” said Search. Today the site has over 110,000 images, and counting. Capturing the moment in the sport is the impetus for Search’s work. “When I photograph a competition, I have some- thing to take home, not just a souvenir. “ He explained. “I work hard to get good quality video and still images to share with speedskating fans, friends and families.” One of Search’s best memories was photographing the 2005 Junior World Championships in Beijing, but some one of his favorite events to photograph is the age group national championships. “I en- joy the age group nationals because you get to see the future talent in our sport. I had the opportunity to photograph Kyle Uyehara, J.R. Celski. Sarah Chen, Apolo Anton Ohno and Jeff Simon as juniors. Those pictures are great because they are images frozen in time.” Search utilizes his Facebook page (
http://www.facebook.com/profile. php?id=540721480) for sharing images with speedskating fans. “I currently have over 1,000 Facebook friends. I get feedback for each of the pictures I post and I also get great comments from the skaters.” Search has also been a great resource to local media and US Speedskating by providing event photos for editorial use. “Photographing speedskating is my hobby, and my passion,” said Search.
Continued on next page.
www.usspeedskating.org
Fall 2011
RACING BLADE 21
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