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..........

2013 365-17

I haven't been well this week, and the medical opinion is divided, to say the least. It's either a real nasty infection or some weird muscle problem. The result is few photos, but here they are anyway. Shorter descriptions than usual (every cloud has a silver lining) due to a splitting headache.

22/04/13

It was great to see how well the new lighting set up worked. The two shots (above and below) show what I like about it. Nice exposures at really low ISO and good depth of field.

23/04/13

24/04/13

I was outside trying to play kerbsie with Sarah with one of those really cheap plastic balls when I noticed how well it glowed when the sun was behind it. Quick dash into the house for the camera and there you have it.

25/04/13

This is Lola the house rabbit, belongs to my eldest daughter Siobhan.

26/04/13

..and this is Siobhan with her lastest stuffed animal purchase from the auction rooms. I had to drive her home with an antelope head in the front seat and a stuffed fox in the back. I'm not making it up.

27/04/13

Second chance this weekend to shoot wrestling in Belfast. As much fun as the last time and my timing was a little better than before.

28/04/13

2013 365-15

Week fifteen, 100th picture posted on this bout of 365-ishness. It's still up and down in terms of what I'm shooting (as well as where and when) but I'm generally keeping busy and making opportunities for myself. Having a couple of long-term photo projects on the go has also helped and it looks like the old faithfuls (i.e. niche sports) are really the gift that keeps on giving.

8/04/13

This was nearly a defining moment for me. I finally bit the bullet and sprung for a set of dedicated wireless flash triggers with reasonable range. The Phottix Ares transmitter and receivers arrived by post at the weekend so naturally it was straight up to roller derby training to try them out. Their advertised range is 200m+, they have 8 channels (with the option to group flashes) and run off regular AA batteries. They fired every time and also will wake up the flash guns if they go into sleep mode. The fact that company I ordered them from accidentally sent me an additional (un-ordered) set of two receivers was just a bonus. The triggers worked brilliantly and allowed me to use three off-camera flashes to cross-light a very large section of the track and their range allowed me to move around a bit more. The shots I got were crisp and sharp (even at 1/200 or 1/250 shutter speed) and the lighting and colours were dramatic and edgy. I'm so happy with the results I could dance a wee jig.

9/04/13

A strange one this. Not by the side of a road, but along the Comber Greenway in East Belfast. I passed it while out cycling and had to go back today to take a photograph of it. This is notable for a number of reasons. I recall the closure of the Greenway and then subsequently finding out about the suicide of this young man. The memorial itself is situated pretty much directly behind my old house which backs onto the walkway. It’s a permanent memorial, although fresh flowers seem to be placed there regularly.

10/04/13

Yep, one of those "oh shit I need to a photograph days." An empty picture frame, a willing assistant and a small dog.

11/04/13

I ended up spending a hour or so in a furniture shop this evening, in fact it was a furniture shop with no customers, thus making even less interesting. However, I was there for other purposes which greatly lifted any boredom although I did end up wandering around and trying out some macro shots with different bits and pieces in the shop.

12/04/13

Another roadside monument today and like the one above, one with a bit of personal resonance. Ben was a 17 year old pedestrian and a pupil at Regent House Grammar School Newtownards. Ben lived in Donaghadee and was struck by a car while walking home in the early hours of the morning with a friend after attending a Halloween party. This hit a nerve with me, having attended the same school and lived in the same town when I was younger. I'd also walked along the same road after more than one party in the wee small hours of the morning. Coincidentally, a classmate of mine at Regent House was knocked down by a car and killed a little further along the same road while I was at school.

13/04/13

This is the statue outside the Titanic Building in Belfast, and again this is far from original and every togger in Belfast has probably taken a similar shot at some time since the building was opened. It's a noce shot and I suppose the trick was getting the balance right between the detail in the statue and the texture of the outside of the building.

14/04/13

I spent the afternoon with my big son Conor working on architectural photography for his art course. Architectural photography has to be the dullest form of photography ever invented and I can only assume that he's being asked to a module on it in order to put him off photography for life. We did mange to find a rather interesting wall with five of these frames attached to it. See frame, jump inside it, take photo. I can't help that sort of thing. I did not hesitate in pitching this as potential band shoot to a few people. Conor ended up with two rolls of Ilford HP5 film full of abstract shots of various buildings - here's hoping that he has something worth printing off for his course.

One Light portraits

I've started working on using my off-camera flashes to take portraits - this is, I have to admit, very much a learning process for me but I do feel like I'm getting somewhere with it. This week, I tried out two different set ups and techniques which give very different results. Shots 1,2 and 3 were taken on a Nikon D800 with a Nikkor 60mm f2.8 lens

The first set-up was using a basic clam-shell approach to lighting.

1

Self Portrait

This used a black backdrop. The lighting was one Nikon SB-700 flash above the camera and pointed down onto the face at roughly a 45 degree angle. An Interfit Strobies softbox was used to modify the flash. Underneath was a gold reflector also angled at 45 degrees towards the face. This was shot with the flash on TTL mode and camera settings were 1/160, f8 and ISO 100. Plus points about this approach are the even lighting, lack of shadows, catchlights in the eyes and making the subject "pop" from the background. This is very easy to do and produces very pleasing results.

The second approach I wanted to try was using high-speed flash sync (or auto fp on Nikon cameras) to take some more contrasty black and white shots.

2

 Ellen

This shot used the flash as in the first shot - up above the camera pointing down onto the face (but with no reflector underneath). The flash was set slightly further back to "feather" the light falling on Ellen's face. As I understand it, feathering reduces the light as you're only getting the reduced light from the edge of the flash burst. Interestingly, this was taken in my rather cluttered and untidy living room, with no backdrop used. The very short burst of flash was enough to light Ellen's face but the light fell off very sharply, leaving the background under-exposed. The camera was set to 1/2000 f8 and ISO 100.

3

Sarah

The same camera settings, with the light placed up high to the left and again pointing down. As above, the face is lit really well, but the background is pretty much pure black.

The plus points with this approach are more dramatic shots, greater contrast between light/dark areas, no softness (due to high shutter speed) and it means you might not actually need to use a backdrop.

The next evening, I broke out a nifty little honeycomb grid for my flashgun. I've never used one of these before and wasn't sure what to expect. Just to add to the "let's see what we get" approach, I also stuck my 70-200mm f2.8 lens on the camera. The shots below were all taken with the flash and honeycomb slightly above Sarah and off the the left of the camera. Settings were 1/250, f5.6 and ISO 100 with the flash on TTL mode. Again, I wasn't using any backdrop here - the highly directional nature of the honeycomb seemed to light the subject (Sarah's face) with no spill over onto the background, probably because of the angle of the flash.

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