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!

2013 365-24

Back to basics this week, and it looks very like summer has been and gone here. The rain descended yet again, forcing the cancelation of at least one outdoor photo project.

10/06/13

I did the third in a series of "bump" shoots this evening with the amazing Ell'o and Pier. We had planned to visit Belfast's Botanic Gardens this evening; I had anticipated sunshine but got overcast and cloudy instead. I ended up using some flash for a dramatic effect (?) and can't say i'm totally happy with some of the results. We had about four different set-ups around Botanic, this was outside the Palm House and I picked it because it's a good shot of Ell'o's bump.

11/06/13

Responsible pet ownership, rural style. I was going to say "Ahoghill style" or "Tyrone style" but chickened out in case I offended anyone reading my posts who lived in either of these places.

12/06/13

I was working in Glenarm today and had a strange notion to check out some wee men that I had put in place in an abandoned factory outside the town. Of the four original wee men, only one remained, looking as fresh and as well as the day I placed him there. His female companion had long since vanished.

13/06/13

The angriest robot in the world. Found this guy in a classroom I was working in this morning and he looked so fearsome I just had to take a shot of him.

14/06/13

I was doing some cleaning and tidying this evening when I found a handful of big elastic bands. One thing led to another. I took about six different shots with different arrangements of the bands. I think I need more bands and stronger bands -  I'm coming back to this one.

15/06/13

Thanks to the unrelenting rain, we were stuck indoors all day and decided to convert the kitchen into a mini studio. This was my favourite shot of Sarah, and it really needed minimal processing. Sarah then got her own camera and took some of me. They weren't half bad - she has a real talent but is way too bossy when directing her models.

16/06/13

Sarah again, riding through the new bike trails at the Mary Peters Track. Second time we've visited these and they're pretty fun. A nice way to spend a Sunday morning and get some exercise. Not bad way to spend father's day either come to think of it.

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