Wheelchair Rugby Portraits

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!