It’s been a while since I’ve shot some mountain biking photos, so I was excited to meet up with Dan and Brendan at Rockville for some action shots. There’s some really fun terrain out there and it definitely got me itching to get back on the bike again…
Bevin is one of my favorite people to shoot with - always energetic and willing to try fun things. Since she’s an awesome triathlete (she just did her first half-Ironman race - 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run) we decided to try to make a series of really cool pictures that would look like an ad for a triathlon. My friends Ron and Jeff joined us to help with carrying and setting up the 5 lights we used for this shoot. Jeff also took some shots and got some great stuff (I’ll post a link when he gets them online). This was a really fun session - it’s definitely the fewest number of pictures I’ve ever taken for a modeling session (I shot 60 total in the course of 90 minutes or so, and some of those were just “test shots” - I’d usually shoot about 300 or more in that amount of time) but it was also the highest ratio of “keepers” - almost every shot looked cool, and Bevin was getting a kick out of hearing our squeals of delight when we checked the LCD after every shot.
I’ve been having lots of fun with my new underwater housing for the Canon G9. I went over to Hickey Pool to take some pictures of my friend Bevin, and then took some fun family portraits of Aimee and her family. Aimee and her girls were great - they’re all swimmers (the girls are on the swim team in Dixon) and they had a great time goofing around in the water while I clicked away. I’m looking forward to getting lots of pictures of my niece and nephew in their backyard pool when I visit them at the end of July.
It’s been a bit slow lately, mostly because of the weather - rainy and cold. Hard to get out and shoot outdoors. But there was a nice week long break in the weather, so I took the chance to get out and shoot with Mairin and Corina at Auburn. I decided to use the AB800 with the Vagabond battery so I’d have a little more flexibility with lighting (I was concerned with possibly needing to overpower mid-day sun). The AB800 was great, and with a light weight stand it wasn’t very cumbersome, although the Vagabond is HEAVY and a pain to carry around. If I could figure out a way to carry it better, this setup would be perfect.
Went to the UCD mountain bike race at Bogg’s State Forest. Such a great place to ride, camp, and just… be. I have a great time taking pictures there. Erica went with me and was a great photo assistant and two-footed light stand. The picture above, and lots others like it, was possible partly because she did a great job panning the flash she was holding. With her holding the flash, about 90% of the shots came out well… If it had been on a light stand, it would have been much harder to get consistent results. I had my 580ex on my camera, and she was holding the Vivitar 285.
Lessons learned, areas for improvement: My new Turbo 2×2 battery pack was fantastic. Shot all weekend long, 800 or so images, most with flash, and the pack was only 1/4 drained! SO much better than the canon EP4 pack (the one I had to send back TWICE for replacement). It would have been nice to have a battery pack for the second flash though - it couldn’t keep up with the 580ex w/ pack…
At the first location, I struggled to find a good spot - I went back and forth from sun to partial sun/shade, and finally moved into the shade, which was the right thing to do - shooting in the shade gave me full control of the lighting with flash.
