Alpine Ski Racing-Slalom Course

This is a photograph of an alpine ski racer at a gate on the slalom course.  There were seldom any sunny days this winter when we were photographing races so this day was a delight.  The detail in the snow is lost with the low-contrast, overcast days.  The blue sky is very pleasing.  On overcast days the dull snow is only slightly different than the dull sky.
The camera position was chosen carefully to capture maximum body angle at the gate and to get the camera as low as possible.  The background has an obnoxious tower but if we had moved our position to the left we would have been uphill too much and the low angle would have been lost.  The rest of the background is uncluttered, though, and nicely out of focus.  Good action here as the skier has just made contact with the gate and snow is spraying from the skis.
400mm lens, 1/5000 second at f/3.5, ISO 100.