Snowapalooza 2010
Mother Nature showed her power by dumping over 26-inches of snow in less than 24 hours here in Harford County. The storm started around 5p on Friday night and by Saturday morning 18-inches were already on the ground.
Wind gusts were hitting 30 mph, so the game plan at the Hoffmann house was to weather out the storm and start shoveling after the snow stopped falling. Activities turned to indoors. My wife made brownies and bread and the kids rolled out a long sheet of paper and created some artwork.
Finally around 1p, the snow stopped, and the work could begin on shoveling out.
It’s now Sunday morning, and we are still waiting for the snow plow to clear the roads. No big deal, today is the Super Bowl, and we will all be huddled around the television.
Wrestling with Strobes
I must admit, I absolutely love the sport of wrestling. Although, as a photographer, I hate the lighting conditions in which a vast majority of matches take place.
For spectators and the wrestlers competing, the atmosphere of a darkened gym with a main spotlight over the mat, music playing during warmups, and great wrestling action — nothing, in my opinion compares.
The image below should give you an idea of the lighting conditions. The main spot light provides fairly decent lighting (to a photographer) as long as the action is within or near the smaller inner circle. As the action moves to the outer edges of the mat, the light falloff fades fast. The only other light into the gym are the emergency strips on the wall, and the scoring table.
Even if I used high ISO on my camera and fast lenses to get enough shutter speed to avoid motion blur, the direct light from above creates some horrendous shadows, so anything not lit from above is hardly visible — such as faces and holds. Below is an image from this same gym I photographed three years ago using available light only. The wrestlers were out of the inner circle, yet the ref was not, so he is exposed properly, but the action itself is not for they are in the shadows. Not only is the shadows a problem, but I was shooting at ISO 3200; f/2; 1/320 second. This does not provide the most cleanest of images. Sure, I could have slowed down my shutter speed more to bring in more of the shadows, but then everything that was lit (referee, uniform, headgear) would be blown out. Pick your poison.
When only using the main spot light above mat, properly exposing causes very dark shadows in areas not lit by the mat light.
Now when I photograph wrestling, I like to bring my own light with me, so I am not at the mercy of the venue. I setup one of two ways — using off-camera direct lighting with the use of small flashes mounted to the railings of the bleachers, or for this event, with a couple of studio strobes.
Conditions need to be right for me to get out my strobes. The gym must have a white (or very light) colored ceiling and there needs to be areas of the gym that I can put up my 13-foot light stands without being in the traffic pattern of spectators.
This gym suited my needs just fine.
Two strobes fired into the corners of the gym provide me a nice large light source to completely overpower the ambient lighting.
Strobes (shown in the purple circles) fired into the corners of the gym provide all the light needed to light the action.
My shooting position for this match would be in the far right corner of the mat (using photo above as reference).
To trigger the strobes, I use a Pocket Wizard on the hot-shoe of each camera I am using, to be the transmitter and a pocket wizard connected to each strobe which are the receivers. The pop from the strobe is just 1/1100 of a second long.
Positioning myself on the opposite side of the gym, on the same side as my strobes, you can see how different the scene becomes.
The home team bench, ready and waiting.
Once the action starts, I know that wherever on the mat the action goes, I will have consistent light on my subjects. For this match my strobes were full power and I had my camera set at ISO 400; 1/250; f2.8. Here is the color version of the image from above. My preference is black and white. It draws the eye to the subject(s) and makes the distracting backgrounds less noticeable.
Quick and Easy Portrait
CAMERA: Canon 5DMkII; LENS: Canon 85 f/1.8; FLASH: Canon 580EX
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is recharging their internal batteries for the New Year.
During the holidays, families get together and it’s the perfect time to capture some great memories with your camera. Of course, most of us aren’t going to setup a huge elaborate lighting configuration with all the hustle and bustle going on in the house, so in a pinch find yourself a background that is not too busy or cluttered, grab your camera with an external flash to pop onto the hot-shoe, and a piece of white foam or poster board (optional).
The photo above was taken with my flash bounced behind me into the corner of the ceiling and wall. Sitting on the table in front of my subjects was a white 2×3 piece of foam board tilted slightly to bounce some light up to reduce some of the shadows in the eye sockets and under the chin. It’s not going to look as if it was shot in the studio with a softbox or beauty dish for a main light, along with a fill light, hair light and back light, but for something that just takes seconds to setup and keeps your holiday party or any other celebration moving along without interruption, it’s a perfect solution.
Quick. Easy. Painless.
Battle of Bel Air 2009
The annual wrestling event — The Battle of Bel Air — featuring The John Carroll School versus Bel Air High School did not fail in bringing excitement right before the Christmas holiday. Over 500 fans filled both sides of the bleachers, and the local television network was on-hand to broadcast each match.
Last year the match ended in a tie, and had to go to criteria and finally at criteria #7, Bel Air was awarded the win. John Carroll was out for revenge. On paper it once again looked like it could end up in a tie again. But matches aren’t wrestled on paper, and John Carroll ended up the victor by a 39-25 score.
Lighting Setup
I setup three remote flashes, mounted on the railings in the bleachers. Two on the same side of the mat I shot from, each in a corner, and one back light on the other side of the gym in the opposite corner I was at, aimed towards the center of the mat. I flagged the back light so that when action was directly across from me, I did not get any flare from the strobe.
Did Someone Order a White Christmas?
The blizzard that hit the northeast yesterday dumped 20-22 inches of snow on Dave Hoffmann Photography headquarters. Here in the Baltimore area, our average yearly snowfall is about 18-inches. We exceeded that total in 24 hours.
Five (5) stints of shoveling has done a number on my back. It may be time to invest in a snowblower.
Based on the temperature forecast, we are guaranteed to have a white Christmas.
PHOTO TIP:
When taking photographs of snow, it’s a good idea to adjust your exposure correction to about +2/3 to avoid having the snow look gray.