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.
Showing posts with label BMX riders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BMX riders. Show all posts
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, 16 December 2012
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:
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:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)