Risk vs. Reward

The cover of the new Dig BMX Magazine is the best BMX magazine cover I've seen in a while. Possibly ever. The photo is technically amazing; it's lit well with a careful, thought out composition. Ben Hucke, the rider on the cover, is a fresh face that's never been seen on a cover. Oh, and he's doing a can-can handplant on a tyrannosaurus.

What's even more impressive is the process that went into shooting this photo. Jared wrote up an article describing the time and effort it took on his blog that's definitely worth a read. Bookmark Jared's blog while you're at it; there's plenty of good content there on a regular basis.

If you've shot photos like this before, then you understand the dangers involved. If it's not a routine trick(and the best photos usually aren't), then there is a risk for both the rider and the photographer. The rider is trying something dangerous over and over again(over 350 times in the case of the Souney/Hucke cover!) and you're shooting photo after photo trying to perfectly capture a trick that most likely will never be done again. The rider doesn't want to risk getting hurt without walking away with the accomplishment of both the trick and the photo to prove it. If you, as the photographer, lose sight of your vision after the 50th try then the final photo will show it. You need to shoot the 63rd photo with the same anticipation, attention to detail and enthusiasm that you had when you shot the 2nd photo.

Every person that's held a camera has blown a photo. Every BMX/skate/action sports photographer has shot a photo of a rider and screwed up the timing or framing. I can't tell you how many times I've been laying on the ground after shooting a dozen photos and then when the rider sticks what he was trying, I look down to see that my composition is way off. There are few feelings worse than having an incredibly excited rider come up to you after pulling a difficult or dangerous trick and having to show him the photo you just botched. Instant deflation. We can't all fire out perfect photos every time, but if you don't lose sight of your vision you had when you set up your first light then you can drastically reduce the percentage of disappointing encounters that you have with the riders that you photograph.

Bicycle Motocross

It's pretty obvious that I've failed miserably at regularly updating this blog so from here on out I'm going to change that. I may just be doing it to unload the endless flow of photo geek thoughts and terminology in my head, but hopefully someone else can come away with something from what I post here and a dialogue can happen as a result. Whether it's a couple of quick shots or a lengthy diatribe, my goal is to post at least once a week. So without further ado...


All of the Northeast snow has melted and in its place is beautiful weather that makes you want to be outside and smile. Being outside more means I've been shooting a lot of BMX lately. Here's a few recent photos and a description of the lighting and setup.

The shot above was taken in Trenton, NJ. If you've ever been fortunate enough to visit Trenton, then you understand the blossoming city that it is. And by "blossoming" I mean frightening in broad daylight. We parked close to the first spot that we planned on shooting at - a courtyard in the middle of a housing project. The little kids playing drug lookout outside of apartment doors were pretty obvious. This spot is a BMX/skate mecca and is basically an accidentally-made skatepark. When we turned the corner to enter, we rolled up to 6 guys smoking blunts, drinking 40s and playing cee-lo. Understanding that a lot of bike riders come to the spot, they told us to "come in and pull out the cameras". I had a 50lb bag full of about $8k in gear on my back so we decided to try someplace else first...

Black, white and everything in between

I've had some people ask about my post processing with b&w conversions of digital images. I was planning on putting something together, but a friend recently sent me a photo saying they wanted to see what my conversion would look like, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to walk through my processing.




Here's the original image, and my resulting black and white conversion is the image above (All photos in this post copyright Tristan Afre):



This is an extremely low tech walk-through of how the photo was converted. It's about 15 minutes long, and is me editing the photo and explaining what I'm doing. I apologize for for a lot of filler to get to the good content, with a monotone voice mixed in. I didn't plan this or do more than one take, so I've mispoke slightly a few times and left out some points(i.e. the use the of the blacks slider in Lightroom). Questions are welcomed, and if you sit through this I applaud your uncanny attention span.




Every black and white conversion is different, so there's no settings that apply to every image. But the important thing with this look is that you want dark shadows and bright highlights that don't clip, and an even range of tones in between.

A day in the park

I used to ride a lot of BMX but now I mostly just shoot it. Here's a quick video walk-through of an average BMX photo session. Here I used three lights (key, rim, fill) in a typical triangle pattern that can be applied to any number of action and portrait scenarios.





And here's the resulting image:



(click for larger version)





More to come.

-RS

These are a few of my favorite things(and photographers)...

A couple of years ago when adults began emptying their thoughts onto online journals(teenagers had been using them to complain on the internet for a decade-Livejournal anyone?), the word "blog" really bugged me. The words "web log" just seemed to me like they should have been joined together so that people were posting on wogs or even wegs. "Blog" just doesn't roll off of the tongue. It sounds like some sort of onomatopoeic word to describe someone choking on a pork chop. Pow! Kerplunk! Blog!


But as more and more photographers, artists and publications started using blogs as an avenue to organically share and exchange information with the public, I started warming up to the idea of blogs. I got a sense of personality from the people writing them, rather than just seeing a photographer's work or reading an interview or bio about them.

In the photographic world, blogs have transformed into an evolving community that creates conversations between big time pro shooters, amateurs and wannabe pros alike. People like David Hobby, of Strobist.com, are the forefathers of this share-all mentality. Being a veteran pro shooter himself, he created his blog to show off some of his DIY, low cost tips for great photographic lighting. Other than expensive workshops, personal experience and schooling, photographers had few resources that offered detailed, practical and useful information in this high of volume. People flocked to his site in droves and internet chatter about his helpful blog spread like the plague. As advertisers and sponsors started noticing the traffic that he was attracting, a blog was turned into a useful business tool.

I've obviously waved the white flag in the fight against all things blog and recognize how valuable they've become. Time I spend browsing the internet is now almost exclusively used to click through a number of blogs I have bookmarked that offer great content and regular updates. I still prefer paging through an issue of PDN to sitting in front of my computer monitor, but there's much to be said about the instant availability of information over the blogsphere. Did I really just use the word blogsphere? What have I become?

So, here's just a handful of my favorites from both pros and ams that if you don't have them bookmarked already then now would be a good time. Click away:

www.zarias.com
whereisben.com
Tony Sweet's blog
http://robertbenson.com/blog
Chase Jarvis' blog
http://www.digitalprotalk.blogspot.com
PopPhoto blog
http://www.photoattorney.com
http://www.davidbergman.net/blog
Joe Mcnally's blog
http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/



Enjoy! - RS