Rave Run...

Rave Run...
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Two of my friends from the running club, Sally and Helle, asked me to do an action shoot for them. This is one of the results. We're going to try and submit this to Runners World magazine for inclusion int heir monthly "Rave Run" feature.

Strobist info. Bare 580EXII @ 1/2 power camera right just out of shot set to wide angle and triggered with Cactus V4's.

The Light was failing rapidly so to balance sky and get a decent shutter speed I had to ramp the ISO up to 800 and do some noise reduction later.

They've got 17 shots to choose from (this is my fave) so I've not done any post processing other than raw conversion until I hear back from them.

A great learning experience... including don;t shoot with a polarising filter on as a 2 stop reduction sucks up the power of small strobes.

Little Man

Whilst doing the Photoshoot of the staff at school yesterday my wife came to pick me up, so whilst I had the lighting set up I couldn't resist getting a shot of "The Babsa", "The Little Man", "The Maestro" aka "My Boy"

Pro-Bono PhotoShoot for local School.

I had a great time this morning doing a "proper" photoshoot for a local school. The brief was to create some simple head and shoulders shots to update their website and school notice boards.

I spent a fun hour putting a lot of what I have learned into practice and look forwards to posting more of the resulting photos to my Flickr account soon.

This experience was invaluable and helped me to learn a lot including..... how difficult it can be to get some people smile.

• Knowing your gear, how it works, dialing in settings gives you confidence.


• Checking and readying gear (according to a checklist) the night before gives you peace of mind and lets you focus on the creative process vs technical issues.


• Turn off ambient lighting sources to avoid colour casts.


• Having a few poses in mind prior to shooting saves time and puts you in control.


• "Narrow" lighting is more flattering than broad.


• Interact with your models to make it less scary (for them) and a fun experience.


• Seperate the subject from the background more (difficult due to space limitation)


• Show people the shots you got on the camera LCD to get initial feedback.


• Some people just don't like being photographed OR the result... even if others love it.


• The strobist website has been invaluable in my learning experience.


• I am able to turn theory into practice and get a pretty good result.... judge for yourself when I post the images.


• A large school whiteboard makes a great background.


• I need more lighting gear !! (to blow out aforementioned white background)