Spent the day out in O’Neil Park in Orange County, CA with two friends Jordan May and Chris Hanson doing a mini impromptu photoshoot. The last time I shot mountain bikes was back in March when I covered the Warriors Society Counting Coup race. It was my first time shooting mountain bikes and really enjoyed it. Ever since then I’d been itching to shoot another race, but my schedule hasn’t allowed it.
The past few weeks Jordan and I had been trying to organize a quick photoshoot and we were finally able to schedule down a day, and today would be the day. The location I was looking to shoot at was a nice single track covered by a nice canopy of trees. The reason being in the shade, you can mess around with strobes during the day. I haven’t shot much with strobes, and also don’t have much experience with portraits so I used this time to practice both.
I had a really good time and appreciate both Jordan and Chris being patient while I tried different things. We came away with some good images and hope you enjoy them!
The portrait shots are all done with one Alien Bee B400, shooting with a 48″ silver reflector umbrella. The plan was two use two strobes, one as a main light and the other as a key light, but I forgot the Pocket Wizard cord for the second strobe, so we had to do with one. Rookie mistake!
After the male model photos were done, we moved to action shots along the trail. For the panning shots they were done with two Canon 550ex flashes. Both were set at 1/2 power, with one light hitting the side of them, and the second flash hitting them straight on. All the rest of the shots were done with natural light.
I also just recently bought a Magic Arm so that I could start doing remotes, so we put it on Jordan’s handlebars and I ran along to trigger the camera. Because it was still pretty bright out I used a .9 ND filter on the lens so that we could try and get some blur in the background.
We ended the day by doing some static shots of the bike, next time I’d like to get a lot more shots of specific features of the bikes, but we’d been out in the heat for a few hours and we were ready to eat some grub. Next time!
Great shots! I particularly like moose_qqqq8045 above — they’re all good, 8045 just stands out as my favorite.
I am new to using off-camera strobes too, and was wondering how you triggered the two 550EX’s. Did you have to have line of sight to them for an IR trigger, or were they triggered as slaves to an on-camera flash, or something else? Thanks! And, again, great work!
Best,
Kevin
Hey Kevin,
I used Pocket Wizards to fire the Alien Bee and the two 550ex’s. I didn’t want to rely on the IR, so the PW gave me a sure thing. Thanks for reading!