Athlete Lifestyle Portrait Photo Shoot

I was in Florida recently and did a photo shoot with a local KiteBoarder, Scott. It was mid day and I set up two remote speedlights to compensate for the harsh shadows of the midday sun. I love creating dramatic light but besides in a studio where you have complete control, early morning and late afternoon make it a little easier to manipulate the light. Midday however can be more challenging. Do it right though and you can get some pretty cool results.

JFennellPhoto.com

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Skateboard Photo Shoot 1st Day of Workshop

I am in Colorado Springs this week at The Summit Series Sports Photography Workshop.
I will try to do a little post everyday but we’re working about 12-14 hours a day so it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time.
Most of this afternoon was spent at a local skatepark with a few local rippers.
The use of remote flashes and great clouds made for some interesting photographs.
All photos were made using 2 off camera remote flashes triggered by radio poppers.
Enjoy:

Shooting with the sun behind your subject is fun when using remote flashes.

BMX Portrait

Kickflip over the gap

Kickflip to boardslide

Tailslide - This kid Anthony was killing it.

Frontside Air with the Sun Burst in the background

The sun had pretty much set at this point and the sky looked great. Adds making a dramatic photograph

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A Little Macro Fun

The following are some macro shots I was playing around with. I was shooting and exploring trying to get some different lighting perspectives going with regards to macro photography. Most images were shot using an off camera flash attached with a ttl cord to add some unique lighting. I used that in conjunction with the location of the sun to try and get some fun and different lighting angles.

This particular flower I had the flash positioned all the way over on the far left and low to add some depth and shadows to really define the petals.

I like the converging lines on this one with the purple buds and the purple flowers in the background. Converging lines sometimes goes against the rules but let’s be honest it’s fun to break the rules. The late setting sun was falling nicely on the background. I used some off camera fill flash from the upper left to give the foreground buds some POP.

Most of the time fill flash is used to illuminate what is in front of the lens. On this particular day I was looking for different ideas and lighting that was not your standard “Macro”. With this thought process in mind I placed the flash on the ground behind and aiming up at this flower, which gave is some nice backlight and really made the cob webs stand out.

The low setting sun was almost directly behind this patch. Which really allowed the spiky/fuzzy (whatever they’re called) elements on the stems to stand out. Now in this situation using no flash would have resulted in a dark colorless shadows of the stems and flowers. With the ability to use flash as fill light it allowed the colors on the stems and flowers to really stand out as well as using the backlight to create the texture.

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