Junior Nationals were held at night, for faster ice. And it was faster, with a top speed over 79 mph! If you want to know more about skeleton, check out the US Bobsled and Skeleton Federation website and this NBCOlympics.com Inside Skeleton web site. Size, weight, materials, and other requirements are described in the International Skeleton Rules which may be viewed here.

This gallery is mainly posted as a service to the athletes. Athletes and coaches: please add some comments such as the names of the athletes in the pictures, etc.

About the photos: the original images were captured using a Canon 1D MarkII, using Canon lenses 50 mm f/1.4, 85 mm f/1.8, 200mm f/2.8, and Sigma 20mm f/1.8. Lighting at night makes photography very difficult. The light is dim, and has an odd color cast due to the mixture of different artifical light sources. This isn't obvious to us, since our brains do a great job of processing away things like color casts. But a camera has no such built in brain, so these images required a fair amount of post-processing. Most of these images were shot at ISO 1600, with the lenses wide-open or close to it.

These files are medium-resolution JPEG format and are available for free download by the athletes and their families. They are higher resolution than you would typically use for the web, and should make nice 4 x 6 color inkjet prints if you have access to a photo printer. Please acknowledge photo credit if you use these photos on your website, portfolio, etc.

These original images are in a 3:2 aspect ratio, the same as 35mm film. They will print without cropping on 6x4, 9x6, 12x8, and so on up to 36x24 poster size paper. You know you want a few of those large prints, so here's a price list.


News 2006 Jan 15 (Sun) - almost all the photos are online, for both Fri and Sat. There are a few more high speed action shots from Friday which may go up tonight. Please order pictures - all athletes or their families take 10% off the listed prices.