Today’s portrait shoot is of Canada Games rower Keegan Drummond. With my previous water based shoot experience, I realized that I needed MORE POWER if I was going to be able to light up Keegan while he was in the water.
So I velcro-ed together THREE Canon Flashes and fired em up to full power to create enough light.
It was also important to have my assistant Tanner holding the flash stand so that over a thousand dollars of equipment doesn’t go for a fatal swim in the Kennebecasis!
As with previous shoots, I set Keegan up so that he was backlit by the sun. Metered to get the ambient exposure for the bright areas first:
Then turned on the flash monster and let it rip!
Got some nice shots, then I decided to try some on the other side of the dock. From this direction, I was able to get some really great sky and clouds. The sun was shining right on Keegan, but at a higher angle, so it cast ugly shadows. So I used the three flash monster to overpower the sunlight a bit, creating the nice angle of light I was going for:
One of the problems with him in the water was that he kept drifting. Since a rowing scull isn’t the easiest thing to manoeuver, I had him put one of his oars on the dock to keep him steady.
Also tried some shots where I zoomed the lens during the exposure using a slow shutter speed. Worked out quite well!
As he was pulling his scull out of the water, I turned around and realized that would make a cool shot. Keegan was patient enough to hold up his scull for a minute or two so I could bang of a few shots.
The one at the top of this post was my fav from the shoot. It just goes to show how you always want to explore different angles and ideas, even as you are walking away or packing up the gear!
To see more in this series, head to my Canada Games Athlete Galleries on my site that contains more images from this shoot.
To see the full series of posts in the Canada Games Series, click here.
Next up….swimming!
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Noel… it is great to see you doing all of these wonderful images. Your very talented. Love that you thought to tape 3 speedlights together. Looks like you managed to get the light you needed. And I also think that first shot is fantastic. Great work and thanks for sharing all of your thoughts surrounding the shoots and tips on how you acieved the images.
Noel,<br /><br />I like this shot the best out of them all (the top shot that is). Cool little tutorials!
this is an amazing shot! amazing lighting.