2013 365-26

26th week of the 365 project, so this must be the half way mark. A good week for picking up some photo projects - managed to line up around 8 shoots for over the summer, all sports-related. The weekend saw me shooting a fairly big BMX jam in Belfast and I was also going to get to do some graduation photos for my daughter who graduates from Queens University Belfast next week.

24/06/13

Glenariff waterfall. Taken with a couple of stacked ND filters which allowed me to get a 20 second exposure. I would have tried longer but my cable release was playing up. Worth getting my feet wet for this shot though - seemed to capture just the right amount of movement in the water. I'd like to go back and try this again, preferable once i fix my cable release.

25/06/13

Some, but not all, of the poor people who have to work with me on a daily/weekly basis. Their patience is often stretched. That's me on the right, in case you hadn't guessed.

26/06/13

 On the day that many schools were finishing in Belfast, this was one of the shelves in a local charity shop. I couldn't get a picture out of my head - a very disillusioned teacher dropping off a load of this kind of stuff on their way home to open a large bottle of gin. The summer holidays start here.

27/06/13

My daughter's graduation photo. We did a standard gown/leafy background shot, which I'm sure her mother will love. We did a shot in the gown with Katie holding her rabbits, which I'm sure that Katie will love. This was my shot. Katie has just completed her degree in Biological Science and has been accepted for a PHd starting in September. I'm very proud of her, of her hard work and determination and am looking forward to having a Dr Barbour in the family very soon.

28/06/13

A weekend of BMX competitions and shoots. Due to the typical Belfast Weather this was relocated indoors to the T13 urban sports park. I was using a three light set up which gave me coverage of the two largest jump boxes on the track. This guy pulled this trick about 6 times during the afternoon. I'd noticed it during the warm up and then set myself up for it during the competition, and pre-focused on the edge of the jump box. He is mainly being lit by a speedlight to the right of camera with another speedlight providing fill light from the left and slightly behind. I loved this shot the moment I saw it.

29/06/13

Another absolute cracker of a shot. This is Fids, a rider from England and a slightly more mature guy. His yellow bike was really eye-catching but this shot was a fluke. I was expecting the same kind of crucifix trick most of the other riders pulled (sort of a "look no hands" thing in mid-air) but then Fids threw this in. I believe it is called "the nothing" probably because there's nothing attached to the bike. Had a chance to talk to him after he'd seen the photo and he really liked it. That put a big smile on my face.

30/06/13

Back today to the outdoor tracks at Mary Peters Track in South Belfast. Unfortunately, I just about got my lights set up and a couple of test shots fired off before it started to rain, making the jumps unsafe. This is Bob, who I had taken some nice shots of yesterday. Nice guy who took the time to have a chat about my photos. Got a lot of positive feedback from all the guys there, so I am well chuffed. A good weekend of urban sports photography for 2nd Shooter. Hoorah!

Flatland Jam at T13

I had the chance to spend last Saturday at T13 BMX and skate park in Belfast shooting the Flatland Jam. This was a competition involving riders performing tricks on the flat (hence the title). I used a variation on the off camera flash set-up that I've been using for Roller Derby, with two speedlights cross lighting the stage at 1/8 power and a third speedlight at an angle to provide fill light and set at 1/16 power. Camera settings were ISO 200, f2.8-f3.5 and a shutter speed of 1/200.

I've tried to pick one shot from each of the competitors on Saturday, ans a couple of people who weren't competing but could still throw some pretty impressive moves on the bikes.

2013 365-22

Some week of taking photos that was. The more I did, the more I got asked to do and I'm loving it. The slow morphing into a sports togger continues. I'm writing this on a very sunny Tuesday evening in Belfast. So sunny that I took myself off to Tesco and bought a nice little table and chairs for the back garden, and that's where I am right now.

27/05/13

I was on the road to Bangor on a mission of sorts and realised that I would pass Rihanna's tree. Everyone in Northern Ireland knows the story of how the farmer who owned this field came out and ordered Rihanna to cover herself up. The tree looks much more bleak in winter but it had decided to sprout some leaves. I juked into the field, took my t-shirt off and took a couple of photos. I didn't get shouted at by a fundamentalist farmer.

28/05/13

At the weekend I invested in a e-cigarette and began to try it out. It's not bad and (touch wood) I hadn't touched a real smoke for three days when I took this self-portrait. The glowing blue tip is a wee bit weird, but I'm going to give it a try and see how it works out.

29/05/13

I was doing the psychology thing today, and assessing a simply charming boy who had been home schooled. At the end of the assessment, he presented me with 6 free range eggs from his own chickens in the back yard of the family home. This was quite simply the best thing ever. The eggs are amazing.

30/05/13

BMX jump track at Mary Peters complex in Dunmurray. I've been asked to shoot a big BMX event (or Jam as the kids like to say) at the end of June and wanted to check it out beforehand. The new bike trails here are out of this world and the jump track is breathtaking. I ran across Shaggy who was working on the dirt jumps and John (pictured). This was taken with no lights and with the ISO ramped up. I think with my full lighting kit in place, this is going to produce some awesome shots. Roll on the 29th and 30th June and the Monster Jam.

31/05/13

I arrived home to a rather nice surprise today. I had entered this shot in the Belfast City Council photo competition many months ago and had frankly forgotten about it. Today I received a letter telling me that it had won first place in the buildings and art section and I have been invited to attend a prize ceremony in two week's time to pick up a (small) cheque. Chuffed to bits.

1/06/13

This weekend I managed to blag myself shooting privileges at T13 skate park for the Flatland Jam. Essentially, this involves riders doing tricks on the flat, or dancing on bikes as it was described to me. The organisers went out of the way to help me and allowed me to get on with what I wanted t do. I used a slightly modified version of my roller derby set-up with three lights set up, two to cross light the stage and one to provide a bit of fill light. Again, slow(ish) shutter speeds and low ISO produced some really punchy shots. My only gripe is that its hard to get a feel for the speed that these tricks were being performed at. 8 riders, all of whom were really talented and who approached the competition in very different ways.

2/06/13

This is the winner of the Flatland Jam, Aran. This guy and a spanish rider called Alex really set the place on fire, and produced a close-fought final, Aran took away a nice cheque and an all-expenses trip and entry into the world championships later this year.

Belfast BMX

I was invited down to Belfast's own indoor skate/BMX park T13 to take some promo shots for the Belfast BMX shop, courtesy of Mr David Shine Hall. This was a great opportunity to shoot, and I'd taken some shots down at T13 before, although not in the dark.

This was the first outing for my new Nikon Sb-700 speedlights and (being honest) I wasn't sure how it was going to work out, given that I was trying to pick out BMX riders doing stunts in a very big and very dark warehouse. I was glad to take the opportunity to play about with the lights and camera settings for a while before things started in earnest - as it turned out, I needed it. Although I'd researched this type of shoot before I went along, I ran into a lot of problems initially and the rough settings I had figured out in advance were not working. I tried the speedlights every way I could think of but could not light the subjects properly, leading me to using a much higher ISO than I was happy with as in the shot below, albeit this was after cranking up the noise reduction software in Lightroom.

However, I wasn't happy with the settings I was using. I had a break for a smoke and rethought the issues. I suspected that the SB-700's were just not powerful enough to do what I wanted them to do. I moved them in closer, asked the riders to do their tricks closer to the lights and tried again. I reverted back to my original settings (1/160, f5 and ISO 100) and we tried again. And it started to come together.

What also happened, more by luck than design, was that I was then able to pick the riders out against the black of the warehouse. After my spot of practice, it was on to the jump box. This time I put the SB-700's on either side of the jump box, keeping the same camera settings. Again, this seemed to work pretty well, although some shots were sharper than others.

Caught a few shadows on these shots, but I can live with that. Maybe putting the speedlights at a slight angle might have helped here to kill the shadows.
Moving in a bit closer and bumping my f-stop down to 3.2 I got some pretty good shots like the one below. The larger aperture seems to have completely wiped out the background.

My final idea for the shoot was one that had worked before for this type of thing. I climbed onto the large half-pipe ramp with my speedlights and set them to shoot up at a slight angle with me lying down on the deck and shooting upwards. The riders obliged and again, although some shots were not that good, I got some really nice captures.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable evening once I got to grips with the pros and cons of the new flashguns. The plus points were that they fired each and every time off the D800 commander set-up, they recycled very quickly and they were easy to adjust. The two downsides are that their range seems to be very limited (12-15 feet effectively) and they cannot shoot in repeat mode. I'm happy to be put right on either of those, if there's someone out there who knows more than me, which when it comes to flash is just about everyone.

Finally, here's the entire squad of riders, with David who arranged it all making the bunny ears. Big thanks to each and every one of them. Left to right order - Victor Munoz, Mikey McClelland, Simon Reid and Mike Hughes.
If you want to see the full set of shots, head on over to:

Belfast BMX on Flickr