Thanks! The figure skater was a work in progress. The main shot I really wanted to get was her spinning, but I wanted it to show motion. The Einsteins will freeze her, no matter how fast she's spinning -- and looking at that picture, you really don't get a sense of her spinning madly. Originally, I thought I should capture the motion by using a rear-sync or front--sync flash, but what really happened is that it just looked like ghosting. I probably gave up too quickly on the concept. It occurred to me later that what I really needed to do was a composite. One shot with whatever shutter speed needed to capture the essence of her spinning. And then the second shot with the Einsteins freezing her in action. Then blend the two together.
Then (after the shoot) I came up with another idea. I have shots of her spinning, frozen in action, basically in every direction. I'd get about 5 or 6 shots each time she went into her spin, so I have a shot of her virtually frozen in every direction. I was thinking about putting them together and maybe using a motion blur effect to create that sense of spin, with one master shot of her frozen in motion.
So it didn't work out exactly as I'd wanted but I'm still working my way through it. Hopefully, I'll have some images to post in the next week or two. Thanks for asking!
Hey Ron,
Fantastic capture of the peak motion and decision on move/pose. The concept is great and although blacking out the back K ground is not new, you created phenomenal and artistic localized 'accessory' lighting (beam and matt), as well as perfect exposures on the gymnast.
My comments/critique to take away, just IMHO:
1. Love the pose and lighting on her, I would have preferred either blacked out background for consistency with the set. Also, putting top finger tips a little closer to top edge would give appearance of further elongation. Lovely floor shadows.
2. Nearly perfect. I would slightly darken the hotshot on her left boob, calls too much attention. Slightly closer crop, maybe 10% closer. The only issue is the high contrast dark shadow on left side of her face. With offset lighting and a reaching/extending move, a secondary fill light straight on would help next me. Not sure why she appears to have orange on bottom of her feet in some of these?
3. I agree with previous comment to blacK out lights and ceiling,. You have varied highlighting along her body that will really shine (punny)
4. Near perfect, but my eye is drawn to the dark high contrast shadow band on our rivht side ankle almost looking like a floating foot. This is a by product of the exact rotation position relative to lights. Again, front fill secondary light would fix to remove the huge contrast of Shadow. occurring at the joint exacerbating the issue; you know us Sports guys
;-) again some orange on our right side foot.
5. Near perfect. A low front secondary fill light would soften hair shadow on face as well as provide a whisp of light on underside of legs/crotch (kind of the opposite of lighting you got on top of thigh in number 4 on our left.
One of the main reasons I post on FM is to get feedback like this so the image can be improved. The orange feet, for example, is something I deal with while shooting barefoot dancers a lot, and so normally I'd catch that but I didn't here -- so thanks for mentioning that.
Also really appreciate all the other feedback and kudos you gave me. Now I can go back and look again with a more critical eye.
Thanks!
Ron
gschlact wrote:
Hey Ron,
Fantastic capture of the peak motion and decision on move/pose. The concept is great and although blacking out the back K ground is not new, you created phenomenal and artistic localized 'accessory' lighting (beam and matt), as well as perfect exposures on the gymnast.
My comments/critique to take away, just IMHO:
1. Love the pose and lighting on her, I would have preferred either blacked out background for consistency with the set. Also, putting top finger tips a little closer to top edge would give appearance of further elongation. Lovely floor shadows.
2. Nearly perfect. I would slightly darken the hotshot on her left boob, calls too much attention. Slightly closer crop, maybe 10% closer. The only issue is the high contrast dark shadow on left side of her face. With offset lighting and a reaching/extending move, a secondary fill light straight on would help next me. Not sure why she appears to have orange on bottom of her feet in some of these?
3. I agree with previous comment to blacK out lights and ceiling,. You have varied highlighting along her body that will really shine (punny)
4. Near perfect, but my eye is drawn to the dark high contrast shadow band on our rivht side ankle almost looking like a floating foot. This is a by product of the exact rotation position relative to lights. Again, front fill secondary light would fix to remove the huge contrast of Shadow. occurring at the joint exacerbating the issue; you know us Sports guys
;-) again some orange on our right side foot.
5. Near perfect. A low front secondary fill light would soften hair shadow on face as well as provide a whisp of light on underside of legs/crotch (kind of the opposite of lighting you got on top of thigh in number 4 on our left.
Thanks, Tony! I was going for more dramatic lighting, so just using the silver reflectors here, no modifiers. Well... I may have used the softbox on the portrait styled shot where you can see the wall behind her. Number 1?
I can't remember what power levels I was using. The lights were on at the gym and gymnasts were all around us training. Regardless of that, I knew I still wanted my camera settings set to kill the ambient light, so ISO was probably 100. That meant my power settings were probably fairly high, possibly between 8 and 16.
gschlact wrote:
so just curious, what actually causes the orange on the bottom of the feet? Is wouldn't appear to be just a shadows white balance issue?
I think it's the indirect light that's hitting the foot that is usually facing downward. It saturates the color and takes something that might be slightly yellow and makes it orange. That's what I've come up with, who knows if it's the indirect light or not.
you should celebrate your success! 