As the bike racing season is pretty much over except for Cross Nationals later this week I was planning on taking a break and putting some effort into riding my bike. Instead I've stayed pretty busy, and shot some stuff I haven't done in awhile.
I used to shoot a fair amount of swimming, but being too busy with other projects swimming just fell off. I didn't realize how much I missed it until this weekend. For awhile I was setting up a tent at meets and would sell some stuff- but it just wasn't profitable based on the effort. Many parents just didn't see the value or understand what actually goes into making a great photograph. some even think it has to do with the "camera."
If you get to basics there are four "cookie cutter" shots for swimming that parents seem to like. They are all really tight and basic shots. It's just exposure and timing. Not a ton of thought but it does take skill to get it. Kinda like school portraits. Ack and yuck! I can't shoot that over and over. When one of the swim parents asked me to shoot there Daughter I accepted. Knowing I was only going to shoot one child meant I could do the safe shots and find ways to challenge myself.
I shoot with a fair amount of strobes- so I decided to skip those this weekend. I can't use them on starts due to the regulations anyway, plus it was cloudy or raining so I would have pretty even light. I was also going to shoot with two camera's- one in hand and one as a remote.
Gear overload moment-
I used the following equipment over the weekend:
Canon Mark III, Canon 7D, 14 2.8L, 135 2L, 300 F4L, 50 1.4L, Lumopro Superclamp, benro ball head,pocket wizard pre-trigger cord, 2 Pocket Wizard Plus II's, Lexar 300X 8 gig Professional Cards, and my F-stop bag, basic ziplock bag.
Some notes about the shot above:
Even if I am only shooting one subject at an event I do many test shots to make sure I'm getting the results I want before it counts. This works most of the time. In this case the test shot worked better than the real one, and lesson about equipment was re-enforced. Always have back-up gear! After this shot both my 7d and 14L stopped working properly. In my case I didn't have another back-up camera so I was down to one camera.
Details on the shot above. This was shot on a remote. I mounted the camera using the superclamp and benro ballhead to a pop up tent. I didn't have time to verify placement so I had to eye-ball it. Using a pocket wizard and the pre-trigger cable I am able to fire the camera remotely. I set exposure and focus before mounting the camera and used a wide depth of field to ensure it would be "close enough" for focus. Once I brought the photo into my computer I used Adobe Lightroom to convert to black and white, and add the vignette. Then I used photoshop to finish getting rid of the other swimmers and cropped in a little to get rid of the distracting flags. you can see the before photo below:
The change in mood due to the level adjustments and cropping is a great example of how little things can make a huge change to the feel of a photo. The untouched photo is busy, your eyes are drawn to the other two swimmers or to the flags. The edge of the pool is slightly distorted from the lens. You take all that away with the adjustments and you are drawn right to the swimmer.
