Fox Racing Photoshoot in New Jersey

Back in May of this year I traveled to New Jersey to shoot the Fox Bike 2010 Dealer Workbook. I had wanted to write a post about it then but decided I would wait until the workbook was actually done. A few days ago I received it in the mail.
The theme of the catalog was dark, or night, and the direction for the shoot was that all the images were supposed to look like light flash lit shots at night. Logistically there were a few problems to overcome with this idea. It would have been easiest to achieve this look at night, simply lighting up what we wanted, however we would have had to bring a generator and lights everywhere so that the athletes could see what they were riding. While renting a generator and lights is not a huge cost, carrying it for miles into remote sections of trail is a rather strenuous ordeal, and one that we didn't want to have to undertake.
The other normal option would have been to rent some large 1200 or 2400 watt second packs and underexpose the ambient light by several stops to achieve the dark look. However because of the lighting I wanted to achieve we would have needed 3 packs and 4 or 5 heads, and we would have needed very fast packs to freeze the action at close to full power. This would have been expensive and also required us to carry a lot of heavy gear miles into the trails.
So instead I used Nikon SB800's at full power and a couple of Quantum T2D's at full power and raised the shutter speed up to 1/1000th to effectively lose 2 stops of ambient light and freeze the action at the same time.

There was also a lot of thought that went into locations and shooting direction to keep ambient light in the background down to a minimum, and just by paying super close attention to backgrounds we managed to get a few shots with black backgrounds even at 1/250th during the day.

This shot of Kirt Voreis was used as the cover of the workbook, to see more shots including examples of how they were used in the catalog click on it and follow the link to my Flickr set.

Fox Racing Photoshoot in New Jersey, originally uploaded by ianhylands.

Jeff Fehr in Calgary

I just finished shooting a Red Bull X-Fighters preview event in downtown Calgary with Canadian FMX rider Jeff Fehr. It was a bright day and I only brought a bunch of SB800's so I used what is quickly becoming my current go to technique for action in daylight and shot at 1/1000th f7.1 to bring down the sky and still keep some light on Jeff and the ground. For those of you new to my blog you can read about me technique here. Check out the rest of the photos on Flickr by clicking on the image or going here.

Jeff Fehr in Calgary, originally uploaded by ianhylands.

Fluidride Pro GRT

Last weekend I was at the Fluidride Cup #2 and Pro GRT race #1 in Port Angeles Washington. I hung out with Kevin and Gabe from Evil Bikes and took a bunch of photos of practice and qualifying. Unfortunately I had to leave before the final to catch a ferry to Victoria so no photos of that. Next on my schedule is an FMX Shoot in Calgary next week as a prequel to the Red Bull X-Fighters event at the end of the month. Oh, and I can't forget about tomorrow's SRAM sponsored Fresh Air Jam at Jordy Lunn's mom's house in Victoria. I checked out the course yesterday and the event should be awesome!

Fluidride Pro GRT, originally uploaded by ianhylands.

Fox Racing Photoshoot

I just did a photoshoot with Kirt Voreis for Fox Racing. I can't really show you any shots from the shoot but here is a shot of Kirt's mechanic Travis railing the 50 through a corner as I test the lights.

Travis Lucas, originally uploaded by ianhylands.

2009 Sea Otter Downhill

So I haven't posted in a while, been pretty crazy with being a dad. I've been working on refining the high speed "hypersync" with my pocket wizard multimax's, and it's been working fairly well. I can't wait for them to come out with the Nikon version of the Flex TT5 though, firing with the camera in one hand and a pocket wizard in the other is a little tiring. I find a good solution at the Sea Otter downhill though. I started shooting normally at 1/250th sync and I was really not happy with the amount of blur I was getting so I switched to the high speed and started shooting at 1/1000th. Then I realized that every shot was pretty much going to be the same so I put my camera on a tripod and just stood there pocket wizard in hand. I realized that if I had planned ahead I could of brought a lawnchair and and icy glass of lemonade. You can see the rest of the shots here

2009 Sea Otter Downhill , originally uploaded by ianhylands.