Figure Skating Now

by Chataigneau, Gerard; Milton, Steve

• ISBN13: 9781552975275
• ISBN10: 1552975274
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Firefly Books Ltd

Summary

Michelle Kwan, Alexei Yagudin, Elvis Stojko, Anissina and Peizerat the names of today's greatest figure skaters are as evocative and magical as their stunningly choreographed programs. These brilliant young skaters, and many, many more, are spotlighted in this richly illustrated book for every fan of the world's most elegant sport.Figure skating is a sport like no other. Combining grace, incredible athletic ability and true showmanship, every competition is exhilarating and highly entertaining. Anything can happen on the ice and often does. As the fans of figure skating know, beauty and danger add up to the greatest show on ice.The team of Gerard Chataigneau and Steve Milton combine their love of the competition and many years of experience photographing and writing about the skaters to produce a wonderful tribute to the stars and their art. With biographies and statistics, Figure Skating Now offers a fan's eye view of the competitive world of international figure skating at its highest levels.What youngster has not dreamed of flying gracefully across the ice in a glamorous costume, astonishing onlookers with a perfectly executed triple flip and a dizzying scratch spin, as the music rises and falls with each move? The extraordinary photographs in Figure Skating Now show brilliant young stars doing precisely that. This is an ideal book for dreamers, skaters and armchair fans alike.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Assessing your garden

Getting to know your soil

Your garden's microclimateImproving what you have

Improving your soil

Creating shelter

Weed control

Making your own compostMatching plants to your garden

Choosing the right plants for your gardenCaring for plants in tough situations

How to make the most of difficult conditionsPlant Directory

How to use the directory

Achillea filipendulina (Yarrow) to Yucca filamentosa (Adam's Needle)

Index

Acknowledgements

A zone map for the US and Canada

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

IntroductionA perfect moment forever frozen in time: that is the power of still photography, the power to explore a most extraordinary realm that exists at 1/500 of a second or beyond! In these tiny fractions of time, the camera can capture a hidden world, and what beauty is revealed when it is the world of figure skating!The joy, the excitement, the power, the intensity, the greatness, the sheer beauty, it's all there, with an exceptional sophistication that, I believe, is unique to figure skating. This sport is a feast for the eye. It is also rich in emotions and expressions. The feelings and personalities of the skaters are center stage; they are an important part of performances that will captivate you and move you in ways you could never have imaginedFrom Calgary to Nagano and just about all the World competitions in between (or after), I have seen a lot and, thankfully, I have been able to capture a fair amount on film.A typical day of figure skating photography begins early during competitions. In 1995, at Worlds in Birmingham, I went to dance practice at 5 AM! That was the only way I could move unhindered and get the angles I was looking for. Would you believe that this early all the skaters were dressed up and the women were in perfect make up? No detail was left to chance, a perfect practice for the ultimate moment to come later that day, the ice dance final.Discipline and dedication go hand in hand in figure skating. When you see a performance at a world championship, you can be sure there is a life of training and development behind it. Most competitors have started to skate at a very young age. They train each day on ice for six or seven hours; they attend off-ice sessions in ballet, ballroom dancing-indeed, they spend far more time training than the average person spends working a regular job. So, when you see a competitive program on Worlds' ice, it represents a phenomenal amount of effort, not just that all-important talent.Over the last 10 years the quality of competition has climbed steadily. Skating now is at a level never seen before! Look at the top five in each discipline and you will see that they are all capable of gold medal performances. Then look at the top ten; again you will be amazed at how capable they all are and how close they can come to the podium!One discipline that has evolved perhaps more than the others is ice dancing. Superb renditions, great speed and incredible complexity are common to all top teams. Creativity is always one of the main ingredients in dance, but now all teams have to confront required elements that give their technical ability a tough test. But you do not need to be an expert to enjoy the performances. Instantly you will know what is great and you will enjoy it to a degree beyond words that only the soul can appreciate.Images have always been so important for me that I never really quite took the time to read much, until now.... I have known Steve Milton for some time and we would always see each other at competitions in some faraway places. Its funny that here we are, two Canadians, almost neighbors, but the only time we would speak to each other is in airports or press halls in Switzerland, Japan or some other country! Steve is fabulous at capturing the story behind the pictures; I hope that, together, we have made a book that will speak to all figure skating fans, wherever they may be.Gérard Ch'taigneau