Wrestling with Strobes

December 30, 2009 | Filed Under Sports, wrestling | 5 Comments 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Battle of Bel Air 2009

December 24, 2009 | Filed Under Sports, wrestling | Leave a Comment 

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.

John Carroll Grapplers Win Home Opener

December 3, 2008 | Filed Under Sports, wrestling | 4 Comments 

The John Carroll Patriots wrestling team opened their home schedule against Boy’s Latin on Tuesday afternoon with a 56-18 win.

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Wrestling Team Poster

July 28, 2008 | Filed Under Digital Editing, group portrait, wrestling | 4 Comments 

Keith Watson, aka “Watty”, head coach of the John Carroll Wrestling team (a private high school in Bel Air) called me with regards to creating a team poster/schedule for the 08-09 season.  Watty, who is sometimes referred to the P.T. Barnum of Harford County wrestling, for he is always thinking of ways to market and promote his school and the sport. His first thought was to assemble the team on someone’s front porch and have some slogan referring to porch, big dogs, etc.

My initial reaction was trying to find a large enough porch for a shot like this, but even more challenging would be to find a time when all these guys would be free at the same time (over the summer), to make the shoot. These are high school boys, many who have summer jobs, are on family vacations, or are more interested in hanging with their girlfriends. I offered up a different idea — shoot each wrestler individually with a green screen, cut them out and create the illusion of a group shot. Using this method, each wrestler would be lit under controlled conditions much easier than trying to setup lights on location. This approach provides a way to now come up with any background image to use for the poster. The other advantage, is weather is a non-factor, so no rainout date would have to be planned.

The last day of class for John Carroll was June 6, so I went to the school that day, setup and shot each wrestler that Coach Watson wanted to be in the poster, before they all spread like wildfire after finishing the school year.

I submitted for review, ten different background images, from pastures to buildings, for potential candidates for the final poster. Coach Watson and his staff settled on the stormy clouds version. In addition, he let me know that one of the original wrestlers has transferred to another school and would need to be removed. With the removal of that wrestler, I then rearranged the other guys to balance it out.

Coach Watson wondered if I could add a bolt of lighting to the sky. I played around with Photoshop after Googling for help inspiration and technique from others. I personally like the poster without the lightning, but the coaches loved it, and wanted it included.

The final step was to add the text, and get the final OK.  Once approved, it was time to send the final image to the lab to print the posters.

This was a fun experience, and would gladly accept another project that could utilize the green screen.

-30-

Mount Mat Madness V

January 22, 2008 | Filed Under Photo Tips, Sports, wrestling | 1 Comment 

Saturday I spent the entire day at the 5th annual Mount Mat Madness tournament. This is one of the toughest high school wrestling tournaments on the east coast. For anyone who loves the sport of wrestling, this is a must-see event.

I was on-hand to shoot some key semi-finals matches as well as all of the championship finals matches.

The lighting inside of the athletic center at CCBC is nothing spectacular, so I brought my trusty speedlight setup with me.

A very nice balcony along one side of the building provided a great location for me to mount my two speedlights. Using superclamps, I could easily mount them to the railing on the balcony.

I set my two Canon 580EXs at 1/4 +0.3 power; 105mm zoom and pointed the lights slightly inward towards the center of the mat and aiming at the far end of the mat. You can see a view from the balcony as they were setting up the mat for the finals. Once the lights were in place, it was time to head down matside to get my camera settings worked out.

I snapped a few shots of people walking across the mat and by checking my histogram on the camera, determined ISO 400; f/5.0; 1/250s was pretty close. I set my WB to daylight and was ready to go.

The finals did not disappoint — there was some fantastic wrestling and I was able to watch it on my belly at the edge of the mat. I’m already looking forward to MMM-VI!

Here are a couple more photos from the finals.