East Coast Cyclones vs Waterford City Viqueens

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of travelling to Greystones on the outskirts of Dublin to photograph the bout debuts of the Cyclones and the Viqueens. I'd already seen some of these skaters in action in Belfast as part of the all-Ireland rookie Blockopussy bout and was looking forward to testing out my new and improved derby set-up in a new venue. Accompanied by my favourite little photo assistant we had a great day out courtesy of the East Coast Cyclones and received a very warm welcome. In contrast to my first visit to photograph derby in Dublin last year, I was allowed fairly free access around the track and benches and the Refs and NSO's who travelled from Belfast had taped out two "Barbour boxes" in centre track, which were well used by both myself and another derby photographer. Anyway, the Viqueens edged out the Cyclones 212 - 167 in a well deserved victory in what was a pretty close-fought bout. Here's a few shots..........

Belfast Banshees vs Stuttgart Bad Seeds

Shooting roller derby again on Saturday just past, and a first ever international bout in Belfast with the Stuttgart "B" team travelling to take on the Belfast Banshees. I had picked up an extra Nikon SB-800 flashgun second hand during the week and pressed it into service as my key light, lighting down the straight. The SB-800 was backed up by my two faithful SB-700's as fill lights on corners 3 and 4 with the really old reliable SB-28 parked on my back up body which was equipped with my other second hand purchase of the week, a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens.

8mm Fisheye lens in action

Anyhooo, the lighting with three flash units worked really well, as did setting a custom white balance using the weird mix of flash and flourescent.

Rosa "Sigourney Cleaver" Hughes takes her bow

The bout itself was really close and pretty exciting, with the lead changing hands a couple of times druing a hectic first period.

Stuttgart were heading for a big win with a 40+ points lead in the last few minutes until the unstoppable Hanabolic Steroids hit the track to jam for Belfast in what was the final jam of the night.

Hannabolic pulled out all the stops, aided by some pretty dedicated blocking and closed the gap to a very respectable 16 points before the final whistle.

A big result for Belfast and one which will move them up a few places in the European rankings.

Skateboard NI - 2nd Annual Jam at Bridges skateboard park

I was invited (ok - I blagged an invite) to photograph this skateboard event in Belfast courtesy of Skateboard NI. This was my first time shooting skateboarding and that raised the issues of timing and knowing when to shoot to catch the tricks/stunts. This was balanced against the fact that it was so bright and sunny that there was no way I would be using flash, so I could (if i wanted to) get into "spray and pray" mode.

I caught this shot when I was getting my settings right (generally shooting at 1/1600 - 1/2000, f2.8 - f3.5 and ISO at 200-400) having noticed this guy jumping up and over the rim of the main bowl in the park. I legged it down and was lucky that he did it again.

The event involved three/four sections staged at different parts of the park. Each had slightly different demands in terms of finding the right angles and avoiding street lights, fences and so on. Some of the angels involved getting in the way of flying skateboards and I managed to get hit three times. The last, on my right knee, was pretty damn painful and involved a day of icepacks and painkillers to clear it up.

The under 16's competition was impressive; the over 16's competition was simply mad. Bodies hit the ground, boards were broken, tricks were tried over and over again until they worked. The sheer dedication of the skaters was something else - lots of bruises and only one (thankfully) trip to hospital in an ambulance.

The best shots definitely came when I was prepared (or stupid enough) to get as close to the action as possible and as close to the tricks as I could get. I ended up with a mix of close stuff (above) using a 24-70mm lens and shots taken using a 70-200mm lens (below).

The other thing which seemed to work well was to get low and shoot up, although this was what got me whacked all three times. Only afterwards did it dawn on me that I was also risking some pretty expensive camera gear for the sake of a half-decent shot.

All in all, another interesting experience and one which I would be quite happy to repeat if given the opportunity.

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.

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