About two years ago, in the spirit of adventure and creativity, I decided I was going to try and photograph the ocean with artificial lighting. I had an image in my head of all the things I’ve seen in daylight hours, with the stark contrast of an illuminated wave against a dark backdrop. A run-of-the-mill day down at the beach certainly wasn’t going to do either. We were going to go straight to the top and shoot the biggest and meanest waves we could find.
Lighting action and sports photography can often be complex. The flash cannot always be placed where it should and with the x-sync limitation of our cameras, it can be difficult to have the required settings. But some photographers, like Tristan Shu, master their craft and can push the boundaries of flash photography.
New Zealand Photographer Miles Holden has plenty of options when it comes to diverse landscapes at his disposal. In this series called "Scenic Silhouettes," Holden wanted to focus on a more simplistic, quieter series of images of bike riding, set against a stunning landscape. This behind-the-scenes video takes you helicopter-hopping around diverse topography of New Zealand with Holden during his project.
It can be a real creative challenge to try and concept, as well as execute, something that has never been done before, especially in photography. Adventure photographer Craig Kolesky accepted that challenge and ended up in the desert of Namibia, with two unlikely athletes for such a location. I asked Craig a few questions about this project that he shot for Red Bull Photography.
SmugMug teamed up with adventure photographer Tim Kemple and traveled out to Iceland with a couple of athletes in search of ice climbing and photographic opportunities unlike any that have been captured before. This film gives the viewer insight into Tim's process, but also captures the landscape and action very elegantly. This film blurs the line between behind-the-scenes, adventure film, and short documentary.
Leroy Bellet is a 16-year-old freelance surf photographer from Australia who has recently been featured in several major surf publications because of his experimentation with artificial lighting in the water. Using a flash in the water allows the subject to still be illuminated while taking advantage of times when the natural light is most unique, like early morning, sunset, and night. We recently got the chance to talk to Leroy and learn a little bit about him and his technique.
Last year, Sweetgrass Productions made an incredible skiing short film, "Afterglow," which they followed up last month with "Darklight," its mountain-biking equivalent. Right away, one of the film's main intents is to blast you with color. Entire mountainsides have bright, neon-colored hues cast over them as bikers bomb down them through lime-green forests and over deep orange-magenta ravines, all in the middle of the night.
You, me, and the rest of them, we've all wondered why people are so infatuated with lightning-fast memory cards. Sure, it's great to bump up the speed so your camera can shoot relatively quickly and to enable fast transfers to the computer or backup drives. But at the end of the day, most of us have settled our minds on the idea that we really don't need more than 90MB/s cards. 100MB/s is that sweet spot that seems to be the limit of necessity (and reasonable prices). But a new video shows us why new formats, like the XQD card, and the faster speeds that come with it are actually useful in a real-world scenario (for some people).
David Davis is one of the top photography writers ever. He has an astonishing talent for telling the story behind some of the most memorable sports photos of our time, including the shot of Brandi Chastain ripping off her jersey after scoring the winning goal at the 1999 Women's World Cup, of Kathrine Switzer running the Boston Marathon, and "the Photo That Took Surfing Worldwide". He's back again with another riveting piece that tells the story of the photographer who photographed one of the greatest long jumps of all time.
Recently our own Lee Morris shot a model photoshoot entirely with an iPhone 6s Plus, showing that with proper lighting technique, a good model, and proficient use of editing software, you can obtain professional looking results with even the most humble of cameras. Andrew Weber, a professional sports photographer, decided to take it one step further by capturing the unpredictable environment of a primetime NFL game with only his iPhone 6s Plus in hand. Weber was kind enough to answer some of our questions and provide a great sampling of his photos from the shoot.
During the winter months, snowboarders and skiers dream of those big powder days, where a storm leaves the mountain covered in a soft blanket of snow that’s perfect for riding. During the summer months though, mountain bikers have never been able to experience anything that can truly match a mountain that's freshly covered in snow. Until one day at Whistler Blackbomb mountain, when dirt literally fell from the skies to create the very first dirt blizzard.
Los Angeles Angels team photographer Matt Brown gives us not one, but two behind-the-scenes videos that give the smallest of glimpses at what is involved in being the photographer for a Major League Baseball team.
This week we get to look at yet another style of retouch, a sports styled image. Each genre, weather it be fashion, beauty, landscape, or sports is going to have different parameters to follow and slightly different goals to achieve. With a female athlete it can be particularly tricky, because it can be challenging to find the line between doing to much or not enough especially as it come to skin retouching. In this post we will look at some of the steps and tricks used in this particular image that can be applied to your own sport retouch. We will also take a look at what else can be done to this image.
Every year Crankworx holds a Mountain bike event in Whistler, Canada that is a combination of downhill, slope-style and enduro competitions. They also host the Deep Summer Photo Challenge, where they put six photographers head to head, with the challenge to build a slide show that showcases mountain bike culture within Whistler. Watch this behind the scenes from Laurence Crossman Emms, as he explains the thought process behind his slide show that later becomes the viewers’ favorite.
Check out this video by Monica Herndon which features Florida-based, Tampa Bay Times, photojournalist Dirk Shadd as he sets up to shoot a hockey game. When talking about the his use of remotes Dirks says, "… they’re kind of two purposes. One is that it’s a really graphic really clean angle and that’s what I like most about it but it also kind of a back up. If I get blocked on a shot or if I miss a shot or I don’t have a shot there is a chance I will have it from the remote. So you kind of do it a little bit out of creative artistic excitement and a little bit out of photos self defense".
