The thing I was most worried about at the beginning was dealing with the shadows the wheelchair would probably throw when I shot flash at it. In the end that actually turned out to be easy compared to ensuring the tennis racket would be in the right place so as not to throw strange patterns!
I had met Markus at a wheelchair rugby training session and he expressed interest in having me take some pictures of him on the tennis court - a little while later we sorted out this session in the early evening of a very sunny day - not the easiest conditions to shoot in but luckily one of the courts had a bit of shade. I had wanted to shoot a dramatic sports portrait as well as some more friendly ones, so I needed to overpower the ambient light with flash. The thing I was most worried about at the beginning was dealing with the shadows the wheelchair would probably throw when I shot flash at it. In the end that actually turned out to be easy compared to ensuring the tennis racket would be in the right place so as not to throw strange patterns! A completely different look came about by just changing the angle and tweaking the settings a little: Of course we also wanted some more friendly shots and a couple of action shots, so I moved around a little and also changed the editing in order not to have them look so harsh and sharp: Definitely fun for me and something I would love to repeat! Not sure I am interested in action sports photography but sports portraits look like they could be something to expand into as they are similar to music promo pictures!
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So I went to play wheelchair rugby with my friend Shadi and his team at the rehab center Weisser Hof up in Klosterneuburg yesterday and had a really great time - apart from the fact that my arms and shoulders are hurting something horrible today... Anyway, I also shot a couple of portraits and did something completely new for me: used my itty bitty EOS M with the 22mm pancake lens which translates to 35mm. I had the 90EX Speedlight mounted on the camera and used it to trigger a 600EX-RT at camera right which I had put a blue gel on to get a harsh and direct light. I wanted the gym in the background underexposed but visible and I wanted the fluorescent lighting to shine through a little. I used Nik's Color Efex Pro to run a bleach bypass and a blur filter for the edges. I dialled down the flash slightly for this second one and let more ambient in, but ran the same processing on the image. I like both of them though!
What I learned though is that I will be taking my EOS M with me on trips as a travel camera but I won't be giving up my ability to use off camera flash. Since I don't want to travel with the 600EXs, I will look at getting two cheaper slave flashes to have with me. Throw in a set of Strobist gels and the whole kit still fits in my laptop bag! |
My Photoblog
Just a place to log my photographic activities and share some thoughts. Archives
November 2015
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