Like jetplanes in the sky. (Source: http://marianajsf.tumblr.com)
Category Archives: photography
strike one
18 January, 2015
Archers shoot alongside bowlers at the Sunnyside Bowl Bowling Alley in Fresno, California, 1961. Apparently bowling alleys doubling up as ranges was not uncommon at the time.
Source: Life magazine.
limbs
13 January, 2015
#symmetry (via http://marianajsf.tumblr.com/)
kyūdō (again)
6 December, 2014
Some really nice clean work from Ms. Stiller (yepyep) over on Flickr, who is a kyūdō practitioner herself. I like the way she has tightened up the framing to really catch the calm before the draw; the potential. The classic image of an archer – for millennia – is at full draw with the bow taut, the person and the weapon poised at the critical moment. Sometimes it’s good to see something else.
there’s someone on the field
29 September, 2014
Thx to @RoaringMedia and KBS.
THIS GUY
22 July, 2014
picture roundup
21 May, 2014
Don’t forget, The Infinite Curve’s archery blogging world is as much based around Facebook and Twitter as it is this here page. So if you aren’t following me on social media, you should. Because you’ll miss out on all this cool stuff:
This thing, via goniart.com. I know not what it means, but it’s great.
Mariana Avitia placed fifth in individual recurve at the Medellin World Cup. read more about it here. Picture via @conade.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire hits London’s buses. Woe betide anyone getting off.
Crispin Duenas of Canada on his way to winning the Gator Cup this month. Photo exclusive by Helen Claudio.
Aida Roman, Mariana Avitia, and Alejandra Valencia in miserable conditions at the Mexican Grand Prix earlier this month.
Joo Hyun-Jung of Korea shoots a Robin Hood in practice for the Medellin World Cup. In the ten. At 70m.
Beautiful 3D printed arrow-fletching rig. Via this company.
Got to make sure they have that good form down early. (via Carina Rosenvinge Christiansen)
Archery in Stanley Park, Vancouver, B.C., 1954. (via www.chronicallyvintage.com).
Finally, a target smiley, from the ever-awesome @saralopezb24.
See you outdoors. John x
korean archery secrets pt.42
18 May, 2014
The two pics above were taken by Gabriel Buitrago at the Medellin World Cup a couple of days ago. (You can see the rest of his Flickr stream here.) They show the Korean women’s recurve team lining up like… well, schoolgirls, to listen to their coach, Ryu-Soo Jung. The lower pic catches at least the younger members of the Korean men’s team in mid-bow to their coach. Bowing in South-East Asian culture is a deeply ingrained part of society, and it’s not surprising to see in in sporting contexts, either. I visited Japan a few years ago and went to see a football match (FC Tokyo v Albirex Niigata) where the entire home team squad bowed to each section of each stand after the match, the whole process taking nearly ten minutes before the guys could go off and have a shower. I was personally bowed to for nothing more than buying a few postcards in a shop, which made me feel a bit awkward, frankly.
I ‘met’ Ryu-Soo Jung (above right) in Wroclaw last year, when I got slightly too close to her charges trying to get photographs of the Korean squad for you, dear readers. She gave me a look that could curdle milk. I got out of the way.
The culture of deference towards teachers – indeed, anyone older than yourself – in Korea is based upon Confucian principles, and the education system, while staggeringly successful on a global comparative scale, is frequently criticised by non-Asian Westerners for its pressure cooker atmosphere and lack of creativity, amongst much else. But in recurve archery, the standardised system of training and complete subservience to coaches has resulted in a deep pool of elite level archers, and a series of results which speak entirely for themselves. No one comes to archery later in life or even in their late teens – the talent is nurtured from age 6 and up. However, the junior archers fit the system, and not the other way around – left-handers, for example, are encouraged to take up other sports and will never make it through the high-school / university / professional system that could take them to an international event or the Olympics.
It is easy to say “this is how it’s done”, but realistically, there is no chance of this happening in any other country. These photographs are a visible representation of a long, deep, pragmatic and complex process that only happens in one place. You can import the coaches, the biomechanical approach to shooting, and the brutal levels of training, but you can’t import the social dynamics, sporting systems and money that Korea has in place to produce recurve archery champions over and over again.
Thanks to Chris Hill.
THE SHOT
25 April, 2014
(seeing) archery everywhere
11 March, 2014
My friend Kate Laceby is presently living in Taiwan, and sent me these filtered pics of the former tallest building in the world, Taipei 101. But when I looked at these pictures, I just saw a couple of arrows with very bright fletchings. Because that’s what my brain has started to see. I don’t see lights or a building. I see arrows. Beautiful beautiful arrows.
Read more here.