bikes and things

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!

Lomo Diana, originally uploaded by theginjaninja1979.

Emma just bought a Lomo Diana camera. Incredibly simple and easy to use. Manual pre-focus, one shutter speed. They’re famous for the poor image quality, light leakage and vignetting.

A few examples of Lomo photographs here on the UK Lomo Flickr group.

Would love one of these but thinking of getting one with the fisheye lens.

Went through a bit of a milestone the other day. I’ve just gone through over 10,000 shots on the D70! Obviously there’s no way that all of these have been any good but it’s an interesting milestone. I got the camera last Dec (2007) and have learnt so much it’s insane. When I got it I was working on the program mode and just hoping for the best. I’ve got more familiar with it over the year and I’m just starting to get comfortable using it on full manual setting.

I used to be really in to photography around 16 and started an A level in but never finished it due to my GNVQ taking all my time. I’ve owned a few cameras since but enjoyed this one so much more. I think the jump to digital has really helped. The ability to see your mistakes on screen instantly and also have all the aperture and shutter settings embedded in the file has made a huge difference. It’s no longer expensive to try out options which gives you so much freedom.

Anyway, I’ve really enjoyed it and learnt so much. Here’s to another 10,000 (better) shots.

Went down to the Skatepark today to have a go at setting up some sports shots. I spent the last few days reading up on how to balance ambient lighting and flash. Hard to understand but seemed to work out ok today. Hard to find a suitable place to shoot from as I wanted to protect the flashes so settled on the top of the bowl. First time I’ve had the camera on full manual. Shot around 250 shots today but got the final edit down to around 40. Pretty pleased with the shots I grabbed today.. only room for improvement obviously. So much to learn my head hurts. Full set of images here…

These are great!

So why not take some silly pictures!

Just been digging through yesterday’s Flickr stats for my account and looks like someone has used one of my images under the creative commons license I add to my images. Looks pretty good! Link to original page here.

My first go at using a remote flash last weekend with Dom at Swinley. Pretty pleased with this one although he did set most of it up and I just pressed the trigger.

Was good fun playing around with a remote flash. Dom had a cord which connected the flash to the camera to remotely fire it. This had been extended with a bit of old Cat5 networking cable so that it could be laid down on the ground. Unfortunately it’s quite easy to get the flash in the wrong place and end up with the riders arm casting a shadow over the face. Spent quite a bit of time after reading up on the Stobist website. Totally hooked on the idea of playing around with off camera flash now.

Just had confirmation that I’ve been accepted on a photo course with Seb Rogers in March next year. Seb has done some amazing mountainbiking photography and his pictures regularly appear in the UK and US mountainbiking magazines.

Hopefully this will improve my technique and enable me to get some better shots. Can’t wait! A few more details of last years course.