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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra last night had an after-show party to honor two orchestra members — Ed Patey and Ed Hoffman — who have retired from the orchestra.

The members of the Orchestra, the Symphony Society, Governing members and other VIPs were invited to attend.  A good time was had by all.

Ed Patey holds a poster announcing what he and Ed Hoffman (right) plan to do now that they have retired from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Ed Patey and Marin Alsop

Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate (cold and windy), and the ceremony which was supposed to be held outside had to move into the tent.

To see more images, just watch the slideshow below:

Sure, this is a shameless pat on the back (to myself), but hey, sometimes we’ve got to toot our own horn every once in while.

The new CD of Bernstein’s Mass, which was performed and recorded here in Baltimore at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall last October, features as the CD cover, one of my photographs. I wonder if Jubilant Sykes, the performer featured in the photo, had his hand in choosing the image to use. I say this because Jubilant called me from his California home shortly after this performance and ordered a large photograph of this same image to display in his home. Whatever the reason, I think they made a wise choice.

Just for grins, here is what the original image looked like.

You can see more images from that performance here: Bernstein’s Mass

On our last full day, we packed a lunch and headed off to Sun Splash, a local waterpark, located in Cape Coral, Florida. As luck would have it, thunderstorms rolled in 30 minutes after the park opened. The park decided to close until 2:00p. Luckily for us, the park is only 5 minutes from my parent’s home, so it wasn’t too much of a hassle.

Because we were flying out the next day, we decided to use the rain checks they gave us to go back at 2:00p. The upside to this was the park was nearly empty. We had a troop of about 15 people, and that probably was about a quarter of all patrons in the park for the rest of the day. No lines, no waiting, no problems.

Once unloaded, I went and had 2 cubic yards of mulch loaded into the back of the truck, to finish my landscaping project I have been working on.

After countless trips with the wheelbarrow, loading it with mulch, and then spreading it out in the proper areas, my energy was depleting.

Finally, after cutting the lawn and cleaning up inside the shed, I called it quits. Well actually my back made that decision for me.

As I was sitting on the deck taking a rest, I looked up at the mid-day sun and immediately had a vision of a picture I wanted to create. I went inside, grabbed my camera, lightstand, two pocket wizards and a flash.

I first dialed in the exposure on the sky I wanted to achieve to get the starburst and keep my shutter speed at sync speed, which was ISO 50; 1/200; f/16. Next, I setup my flash on the lightstand, set it to 1/4 power and took some test shots, moving the light to produce the proper exposure of my hand.

The hardest part was trying to get my finger positioned on the sun without blinding myself in the process. Yes, it’s a goofy picture, but it was much more fun to do that than put down mulch.

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The final McDonald’s LPGA Championship was played this past weekend at Bulle Rock Golf Course in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Ironically the winner of the tournament played in just her first LPGA Championship — Swedish rookie Anna Nordqvist.

Here are some images from Sunday’s final round.

Today my 7-year old daughter Keely, tried her hand at doing face painting … on my 2-year old son, Henry.

I happened to be setting up for headshots I’m doing on Tuesday, and my daughter decided now that she has mastered the art of painting on faces, to try her hand at doing photography. She gave Henry explicit directions on how to pose (which of course went on deaf ears), and then manned the camera (with my careful eyes on her making sure she wouldn’t break anyting) and snapped off a few shots. I was able to salvage a few somewhat usable images. I think it’s time for me to spend some time now educating Keely on the art of photography. I think she is showing a liking to it.

The fact is, these plastic devices that you attach to the end of your flash are not softening the light coming out of your flash.

Light itself is neither hard or soft. It’s photons flying through the air in a straight line. The only way to create softer shadows is to make the apparent size of the light source in relation to your subject larger. This can be done, for example with soft boxes and umbrellas placed near your subject. Another method, if you are indoors, is by bouncing the light up into the ceiling or into a wall, which will bounce back much larger light source than the small size of your on-camera flash.

You can also use these plastic flash diffusers to aid in softening the light indoors. What these attachments do, is send the light spraying out in all directions, which in turn, bounce off everything, causing light to fall upon your subject from many directions to produce the look of softer light.

Now, are you heading outside to shoot with on-camera flash? The first thing you should do is take your plastic diffuser off (if it’s attached), and shove it in your pocket, camera bag, or wherever else you feel like shoving it.

Contrary to popular belief, a piece of translucent plastic that scatters light in all directions without nearby surfaces to reflect the scattered light back into the scene, will not soften the light. A diffuser outdoors — a large majority of the time — simply wastes light, reduces range, slows recycle times and eats batteries.

The light that will hit your subject will be the light that starts at your flash and heads straight at your subject. All the other light spreading out in all other directions will not have anything to bounce back from and will just go to waste. If you think that bouncing off the clouds is worth a try, fahgettaboutit, that’s a lesson in futility.

Outdoors, use your on-camera flash as fill, and shoot direct. Your mileage may vary, but by setting your flash to ETTL mode with a FEC of -1 1/3 to -2, should yield some very nice results.

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Today I awoke to a gray, dreary, rainy day and thought, “I think today I’ll buy a new set of tires.”

I’ve owned my Honda Element for just over three years now, and have 66,155 miles on it. I’ve been driving on the original tires, rotating them twice over the years. The tread was getting almost non-existent on the edges, so it was time to head on over to BJ’s, crack open the wallet and help the economy (and my safety) buy purchasing four new tires.

BJ’s is a great place to get tires, for as you are waiting the 35-45 minutes for your tires to be installed, you can browse around the store (and spend more money), rather than sit in a boring waiting room, reading magazines that are months old.

Tires ain’t pretty, but boy what a great feeling driving on brand new rubber. It’s at this time you realize the difference between tires with 60K miles on them, and tires that still have those little rubber spikie things still attached to them.

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You’ve got to listen to WonderPets without outside noise distractions.

Mother Nature brought us some snow on Tuesday and freezing rain on Wednesday. The roads in the morning were covered with a nice layer of ice — too bad I don’t have any ice skates any longer. I could have skated around the neighborhood. Schools were closed, many people stayed home, or went in late to work. I slid off my deck to snap a few pictures.

Saturday night, the Marin Alsop and the BSO performed an “Off the Cuff” series on Brahms. It’s a combination conversation on the featured composer and concert.

A photobooth was set up in the back of the reception hall, and was great fun for all.

The Fallston gym, like most in Harford County, has very little room, and no balcony at the end of court which prevents getting our lights high and pointed parallel to the sidelines. We had to place the lights on the sides, which create too much crosslighting and harsh shadows.

When using strobes/flashes, ideally you want to over power the ambient light by 3 to 4 stops so that when you are shooting at your camera’s sync speed (typically 1/250 sec), the quick burst of light from the strobes is what freezes the action and not the shutter speed. I tried bouncing my 580EXs off the back wall to create a large light source, but my flashes, even on full power, could only muster about 2 stops over ambient. In a darker lit gym, this method would probably work, but Fallston’s ambient lighting is better than average.

I had to stick with direct light from the corners of the gym. I placed my flashes on my 7-foot light stands and set them each to 1/8 power, 28mm zoom and aimed them towards the top of the key.

Here are some samples from the night.

The performance this year features the African Children’s Choir — made famous on American Idol’s “Idol Gives Back” and The Tonight Show. What a talented group of young people.