Specs: Nikon D3, 35-70mm 2.8. 1/125th at F/13, ISO 200. I stopped down so much to get some nice diffraction spikes from the sun. WB was set to overcast for a bit more warmth. I decided to leave the lens flare to add to the “bright” feel. For the main light, I used an Elinchrom Ranger AS with an A head shooting at full power through a varistar brolly box to camera left. The wind can be thanked for newly dented umbrella in the setup shot

Specs: Nikon D3, 17-35mm 2.8. 1/200th at F/9, ISO 200. For the main light, I used an Elinchrom Ranger AS with an A head shooting through a varistar brolly box to camera right. I also used a couple of gridded Q-flashes (one to light the foreground slightly and one out side of the frame to camera left as a rim). 

These were trigger by Elinchrom skyports. Both photos are 99% processed in Lightroom with minimal Photoshop. See setup shots for more details.

Looking back, I wish that the car was turning to the right so I could see the wheel better, but I’m still experimenting with the car stuff. Thanks to Mike Sweeney (ETN studios) for gripping, Fielding Cathcart for providing the Zeus and Vagabond setup and Bobby M. and her husband for the sweet ride! 

For more details, photos and setup shots, keep reading…

Details:

The shot above was created using a homemade car rig (see setup shots). The car is lit with a single, bare White lightning Zeus, to provide some fill and eliminate reflections. That exposure is combined with the “rolling” exposure for the final image.

Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8. Camera remotely fired using radio triggers

Above is a shot of a friend’s "new" 2007 Audi A4 S-line. I had originally planned on doing some rolling shots with the “rig” but it was far too windy, so I settled for a posed frame.

Details:

Nikon D3, Nikon 80-200mm 2.8 lens, White Lightning Zeus + vagabond (Thanks Fielding)

• There are multiple exposures involved:
• One ambient shot at f/4 for the blurry background and foreground as well as proper exposure of the ground
• One Exposure with the side of the car lit
• An exposure with the front of the car lit
• One for the front rim and quarter panel

All flash lit exposures were shot at 1/250th at f/16 to bring down the ambient as much as possible

A few more bonus shots…..

And some setup shots….

If anyone out there wants some photos of their exotic/sports/classic/unique/nice car, shoot me an email!

The shoot was a little disorganized: we showed up in the dark, the batteries were dead on our spotlight, I had never been to the spot before and Paul had only climbed there once. On top of that, it was ridiculously windy and the stands blew over a few times. But it was fun and we’ll hopefully do it again, perhaps earlier than 1am next time.

Details:

The image was captured using a Nikon D3 and a 17-35mm 2.8 lens. Two strobes with red gels were used  to freeze the climber (sort of) and an LED flashlight (also red gelled) was also used to paint in the rock and background. In post-processing, the speedlights were removed and the light painted frames were combined with the strobed frame. There’s a tiny bit of motion blur from his leg moving, but it was necessary to pull in the starry background. The final exposure was 8 seconds, at f/4 and ISO 1000 (to pull in the stars). The strobes were set to rear sync.

By the way, just after this shot, the rock broke and since someone had moved the crash pad out of the shot, Paul hit pretty hard, but still landed on his feet.

Here are the results from a weekend shoot that will hopefully lead to bigger things. Thanks to Jon Loder, Kevin Clifford and Fielding Cathcart. Creative art director and props: Donnie Meyers Studio, New York.

Specs: 9X Nikon Sb-800s triggered by pocketwizards and an audio trigger. Nikon D3 + 105mm 2.8 Micro Nikkor, ISO 400, f/14. Flash duration is calculated at roughly 1/41000 sec.

Some behind the scenes shots:

I’ve never shot the Reno Air Races which is pretty much ridiculous for a Reno based photographer who loves aviation. So when a buddy said he could get me pit access at night, I jumped on the idea. By the time I got out of work and reached the airport, the sun had already gone down. In the evening, the aircraft are bathed in ugly glow of the bright sodium vapor lights, making it very difficult to get any decent photos. As a result, I improvised with my own lighting.

Just as I unpacked my gear, the Military Police showed up and told me I wasn’t supposed to be near the military aircraft, but they decided to give me a few minutes to grab a shot. I scrambled to set up my lights, stands, gels and tripod. Considering I literally had 5 minutes to set this one up, I think it turned out pretty well. There is just a hint of blue in the sky that really stands out when the photo is viewed on black (click on the photo to view on black).

Thanks to my buddy Cliff for the pit access (and keeping conversation with the MPs) while I ran around like a photographer on speed adjusting and position lights.

Lighting Specs: 5x bare Nikon Speedlights (4 with CTOs and one under with a heavy red gel).  Basically, the CTO speedlights are positioned in an X pattern shooting at 1/2 power at 24mm. All triggered by Skyports.

Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, F15 Eagle

The lighting was provided using my expertly constructed double flashed grid setup. I gaffers taped the hell out of carefully adjoined two Nikon SB800s together and precisely installed (velcro and a prayer) a honl 1/8” grid to the front. This allowed the enough light to operate at 1/64 power for action freezing flash duration. 

Final Specs: Nikon D300, 80-200mm 2.8 @ f/8, ISO 200, bulb.

Lighting: 2x sb800s gridded behind and lower than glass,  2x more sb800s, one on either side though large softboxes. All lights triggered by Skyports. 

The pen has a special LED that is night vision friendly, is built using super tough metal and writes in freezing environments.

Photo Details: For the photo on the left, I used black string to hang the pen above a sheet of glass (RIP right after this shot). The lighting is 2x 600w/s strobes on each side of the pen shooting through very large soft-boxes and an sb800 with a round snoot for the background light. The shot was difficult because the pen was constantly spinning and I had to time the rotation perfectly. The pen’s green light was no match for the brightness of the strobes, therefore I took a second exposure with the light on and combined the two. (Nikon D300, 80-200mm 2.8, 1/250 @ F/16, ISO 200)

Photo Details (above): For this photo, I set the camera’s white balance to incandescent (making my strobe light blue). I then added some extra blue filtration to my main strobe for a much colder look. The photo has 3 strobes and one gold reflector: Main light is blue gelled 600w/s strobe with softbox to camera left. 1x CTO gelled (for neutral light) snooted sb800 to illuminate the pen and pad. 1x CTO gelled + “gobo’d” sb-800 for the map and pad on the bottom right. And finally, a gold reflector, just outside the frame to the top left for the warmish colored light. (Nikon D300, 17-55mm 2.8 lens, 1/250 @ f/5.0, ISO 200).

Notice the high tech snoot and gobo/snoot thing. The setup shot doesn’t show the main strobe. Below are a couple more.  

The final two photos were created to demonstrate the angle, shape and intensity of the beam.

Thanks to Fielding Cathcart (friend and Bighorns official photographer) for the invite and use of his “big boy” lights. Fielding has installed 2x White lighting 1600s on one side of the court and 2x interfit heads on the opposite side. All of the lights are up in the rafters, on the corners of the court arranged in a X lighting pattern, cross lighting the court. They are triggered by PocketWizards—on channel 1 for anyone who wants to leech off those heads….kidding, kidding (or am I?).

The lighting is beautiful and the flash duration is very short on the White lightings allowing for very nice frozen action. The one caveat of the setup is that the lights are running at or near full power and therefore require at least 2 seconds to recycle. With slow recycle times, timing is absolutely critical!

I hope to shoot more hoops with Fielding, in the meantime, be sure to check out his website

All Photos: Nikon D300, 1/250th, around f/3.5, lit by 2x White lighting 1600s.

I decided to take the risk of hauling around too much equipment and brought my Quantum Q-flash T2 with a light stand and skyport radio trigger setup. The Q-flash has about twice the output (and twice the size/weight) of a standard speedlight and a decently short flash duration for freezing action.

The Q-flash worked well, especially on a rear sync but wasn’t very mobile. Since I didn’t want to bring it onto the track,  I switched to an on-camera SB-800.

Photo left: Nikon D300, 80-200mm f/2.8 lens, 1/50 sec @ f/4.5, ISO 640. Illuminated by Quantum Q-flash at 1/4 power, rear-sync, triggered by Elinchrom Skyports

Once I switched to the on-camera flash, I focused on using rear sync panning, a technique that involves following the subject (panning) using a slow exposure and firing the flash on the 2nd curtain to freeze the rider in place. I like the sense of motion that is accomplished.

Photo right: Nikon D300, 17-55mm f/2.8 lens, 1/50 sec @ f/3.5, ISO 640. Illuminated by SB-800, rear-sync, triggered on camera

Photo left: Nikon D300, 17-55mm f/2.8 lens, 1/50 sec @ f/4.5, ISO 640. Illuminated by Quantum Q-flash at 1/4 power, rear-sync, triggered by Elinchrom Skyports

I’d like to thank Howard at RPM photography for allowing to access to shoot the event. Please check out his site. For those curious, I will be posting more motocross photos on my flickr account.