Sorry about the break and the no updates. A few things have happened in the last few months. I went up to Liverpool to work for Be-mag and shoot Slamm Jamm. I turned 30 at the start of the month and got really drunk in the centre of London and I’ve been shooting a lot late at night due to work and skater commitments. So i decided to put a right-up about one of the shots i did the other night at around 1am in the morning.Enjoy.
Skating is all about speed and capturing the moment. With photography, it’s always good to experiment to see what changing different settings on your camera will do and checking out the results. I personally love shooting at nights cause i love experimenting with all those flashes i paid soo much for. Even though it’s really cold in London, Jamie Stenner works at his skateshop all saturday and drove 2 hrs to come shoot some photos till the early morning. Glad it was him skating and not me. It was cold enough just sitting on the ground getting photos.
Ok, slow shutter speed means the shutter on the camera stays open letting in more light and colour. This works the best at night cause you use slow shutter speeds to make a scene more colourful and you can create effects that you can’t see with your eye. Using flash also allows you to capture fast moving objects as the camera only picks up light, so your flash hits the skater and the scene and using longer shutter speeds, you can create a blurring effect to whatever the flash doesn’t touch.
Number 1. We set up a piece of wood to use as a launch over the rail into the bank. not the hardest trick but it was 1am and Jamie needed to warm up.
Exposure was set at 1/8s at F2.8. It’s not that fast but Jamie was very solid and there’s no blur in the backround and not much colour in the scene.
Here’s number 2.
Exposure was set at 1.0s at F2.8. Longer shutter speed let in a lot more light and i slowly rotated the camera with the shutter open to get a swurling effect i was looking for. The only thing that is lacking, the skater is too “see through” and not very solid. Still i like the effect and almost a cool shot. The London sky is very bright and yellow and it shows a lot in this photo. A little too much.
Number 3.
Exposure was set at 0.8s at F2.8. Slightly slower shutter but as you can see, it made all the difference. The colour is still strong,now the skater is strong too. I moved the camera a little less this time to get some blur. The light from the flashes hit the launch, bank, rail and skater. The backround is pretty blurred and just as we hit this shot, 2 security guards walked by to make the backround more interesting.
So the finished shot. A combination of slow shutter speeds, flash placement and slight movement of the camera let in lots of light, some blur and sharpening of the important things in the photo.
Hope you liked this little write-up. Here’s a few other photos with the same concept i shot along time ago.
This one is a really long shutter speed we shot for Be-mag back in Aus. Thats Richie Eisler painting the Be-mag, Mike Choley hiddin in the letters and Aussie photographer Hayden Golder, Richie again next to me when the flash went off.
