Deborah is a hurdler, so we wanted to get some shots of her jumping the hurdles. This so happened to be the track she trained on, so she was able to unlock the shed where the hurdles were stored. I thought it would be really cool to have one single hurdle and her in mid-jump shot from a side view, especially against the dark background where the entire focus was her in action with no other distractions.
I set up 3 lights, 2 for kicker/rim lighting one camera right, and one camera left pointed at her and then one main light to my left where I was positioned. My main light was a softbox, and kicker lights had 7-inch reflectors. (Paul C. Buff Alien Bees and lighting modifiers.) For this particular shot I was handholding the camera. I pre-focused on where she would be when I pressed the shutter and turned off the auto focus. Since it was dark I didn’t want to risk missing the shot if the camera had a hard time focusing. All I had to do was stay still and time it perfectly.
This is amazing!