Give me more POWER! Or less sun.
While the Strobist movement goes from strength to strength, I'm afraid I've gone back to using big strobes for nearly everything nowadays. That can sometimes present a problem when you're working outside but thanks to my willingness to knock on doors, and the generosity of everyone whose door I've knocked on so far, I've always been able to find a power socket to plug an extension cable into.
I've been wanting to shoot skateboarding for ages. If you're into lighting then it's the must-shoot sport. After a few false starts over the last couple of weeks, today we finally had the right weather. The guinea pigs were some of the pupils from Invergordon Academy who are doing skateboarding as part of the P.E. syllabus. (Why did we never have lessons like that when I was at school?!)
To cut a long story short, the day was both a success and a failure. It was a failure in that I only got one shot that was anywhere close to what I wanted. But it was a success in that I've learned how to do the lighting so next time I can concentrate on nailing the action shots.
Here's the one shot that I sort of like a little bit:
And here's the lighting set-up:
Even with both of the 1Kw strobes on full power and the sunlight behind the subject, I still had to shoot at f/22 to make a dent in the ambient. If you look at the full-size version of the action shot then you'll see that there's some ghosting around the subject as the sync speed for the strobes is 1/125s and I wasn't able to stop the aperture down enough to kill the ambient. Now I do have three 500w strobes that I could set-up next time to give me a total of 3.5Kw but I think the better solution, if at all possible, is to do the shoot when it isn't so sunny. Today's shoot was around midday, next week's it's 2-3pm so the light should be less intense by then.
By the way, the reason why one of the strobes is positioned slightly closer to the ramp is simply so its slave cell could see the flash from the other one, which was triggered by Pocket Wizards.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Cool shot Andrew, you can see the potential.
Let me know what day you are going to be there next week, I would love to come down and watch and maybe pick up some tips
.
Regards
Callum
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Ha! I don’t think you need any tips from me Callum. But you’re welcome to come along as far as I’m concerned. I’ll check with the Academy and e-mail you.
By the way I notice you’ve had a few football pics in the Ross-shire recently. Good for you! Cracking pics too. I’d say you’re about the best football shooter around here now, along with Andrew Allan although he doesn’t do it much anymore.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Nice one.
Yeah noticed you have been getting some excellent photos in the papers too, you’ll be up for a staff job soon
March 5th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Sorry Callum I must admit that I didn’t ask about you coming along today, it was all last-minute and when I finally found out at 12:45pm that we were going ahead it was a mad rush to get there for 1:30pm so I could be set-up in time.
Staff job… that’s the goal but I don’t think it’s going to happen. I was getting loads of work at the end of last year, and I thought I was producing quality photos, but since Christmas 95% of the RSJ/NS jobs have been going to Derek. Mind you I seem to have found my stride again this week so who knows what the future will hold…
March 13th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Have you tried to take advantage of the electronic shutter which allows you to sync much faster? I think I’ve seen it on strobist…let me see…. ah here it is
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/05/hacking-your-cameras-sync-speed-pt-1.html
I wonder if this trick works with a Canon 1D
Regards, Christian.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:12 am
I like the image, I am from the Tain area and skate there when i am home. I am also a photographer, I would love to collaborate with you on some journalistic images of skateboarding. Feel free to have a look at my stuff at www.lips.carbonmade.com . I do relise this was an old post but im sure you still have an interest in capturing the sport
cheers