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.
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5 Responses to “Wrestling with Strobes”
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That was a great writeup. Much appreciated. What settings do you use?
Mark, Oops, I forgot to add that information. I updated the text to put that in, but the settings were B800′s at full power and ISO 400; 1/250; f2.8
Any info on how you’d use hotshoe strobes?
Kevin, here is a post I made using them a while back. http://blog.davehoffmannphoto.com/2008/01/mount-mat-madness-v/
I’ll do another one with a typical gym setup in the future. The one I linked to, had a balcony, which isn’t typical in most gyms.
Dave,
I enjoyed reading your write up on lighting. I have been using my 70-200 f2.8 L IS in sports mode with OK results using available light only. I have been wanting to use strobes, but notice that most photos with this lighting lack depth. Your photos, however, turned out beautifully. I would like to know if the strobes were distracting to the spectators or wrestlers in any way. It doesn’t seem like it would be a problem when the gym lights are on, but is it an issue for the duals with the single light over the mat with the lights off?