Swinley riding and photography
I haven’t been feeling great recently and have had a bit of a chesty cough and a bit of a cold. I still wanted to get some fresh air this weekend so arranged a ride with Vaughan, Matt, Graham and Dango. I didn’t actually ride though, just used the bike to get to the trails on the fireroad. I wanted to practice taking more action shots with remote flashes and balancing natural light. Swinley seemed like the perfect place as there is the jump gulley and also a load of trails on Surrey Hill that have berms, tables and various other trail features which are pretty good fun to session [ie come past me numerous times so I can take pics]. They’re all in a relatively small area so I could set up a shot and not wait too long for them to come around again.
I found setting these shots up considerably harder than the skate park the weekend before. In the skate park I shot in one place and waited for the action to happen gradually adjusting aperture and the flash power until I felt happy with the results. I think I shot a lot of the skate park on aperture priority and also wanted to get used to using the camera on full manual. I’ve been Reading up lots of the Strobist blog and also been looking through other sports shots on Flickr to try and get an idea of how to light them.
I shot around 320 images and edited these down to 50 or so. Some are better than others but the one I am most pleased with is this shot of Vaughan. That bright light behind is the sun low in the sky. I used to two flashes to freeze the action, illuminate him and also remove any shadows on his face. The flash to the left was on a mini tripod and the one to the right ball bungied to the tree.
I’m also pretty pleased with this one of a local rider taking on one of the bigger jumps on the jump gulley.
I think one of the hardest things was not actually setting up the lights but focusing on the rider as they came in to shot. For the shot of Vaughan I literally just popped the camer down low and without looking through the viewfinder pressed the button and hoped for the best. Getting the camera to focus this quickly on a moving target is pretty tough. I had to bin a fair few shots as the camera had focused on the background rather than the rider. I guess the best way to do it is to manual focus and get a large enough depth of field to capture the rider and press the shutter at exactly the right point. One more skill to learn I think… Lots more to learn but enjoying the process!