A large proportion of the jumpers on the busy Columbus Day were beginners, most taking their initial jump with the aid of an experienced "flyer". I thought it would be fun to document their expressions as they approached the landing end of their flight, and given the heavy contrast of shooting into a bright sky, I've chose to increase exposure and flatten contrast in order to better see faces and features. This overexposes the backgrounds, and gives the photos a "cartoonish" character, not unlike Normal Rockwell's old Saturday Evening Post covers.

(Please excuse that some of the early shots were done with an older D1H camera at highISO (a mistake). This camera doesn't have the resolution or noise-avoidance to do this type of enhancement at high ISO without a lot of digital noise showing, but I thought some of the captures were worth including despite this. So noise reduction has been applied and they are a bit blurry as a result. Some still also have noise showing.)

The last photo is of my daughter....my reason for being there to begin with. Her first jump.