As I mentioned at the end of last week, I spent much of Saturday Pinning Down Some Wrestiling Images. After spending eight hours navigating brackets, changing batteries, squatting at mat edges and dealing with a hot, crowded gym, I came home with well over two hundred photos. Three were submitted to the photo editors and one should come out tomorrow in the Chapel Hill News. The assignment was to shoot the Chapel Hill wrestlers at the Mideast Regionals. In particular, I was supposed to get a shot of Corey Mock, one of the team’s stars.
But I have never been to a wrestling match, never mind a regional competition. What I know of wrestling comes from the occassional Olympic match and whatever high school wrestling has made it to the screen, big or small. Oops.
Let’s skip over the problems of a legally blind guy getting around town on a weekend without his normal chauffeur. [Just thank George and Martha for me.]
The lighting conditions were unpleasant with minimal fluorescents in a dark gym. Two of the referee tables had ghastly glowing panels in front. There were three mats laid side-by-side, so there were three matches going on at any moment. The gym was full, with little room to maneuver.
I had my light stand and my Vivtar, bu needed the mobility to move from mat to mat. I should have used the strobe anyway without the stand. That idea did not hit me until now, so no luck there. Instead, I went with the on-camera SB-400 with an omnibounce. The omnibounce diffused some of the harsh shadows. Yet, when I dialed up the flash enough to get good exposures, it not only killed the background, but it caused noticeable shadows. Now that I am thinking about, putting the Vivitar on an optical trigger at another corner of the mat would not only have solved these two issues, but have given me some nice pop. I ended up shooting at ISO800 and 1600, but was still underexposed. Way too much grain, so no cropping.
Meanwhile, David Hobby used high school wrestling, in the “Wrestling with Off-Camera TTL” section of his ocketWizard FlexTT5 and MiniTT1: Full Review post.
The gym was lit with vapor lights — not really close to anything in the fluorescent range. So we greened three Canon flashes and dialed the camera’s white balance around until they looked close on the camera screen. We stuck the three Flex-equipped flashes on stands in a roughly triangular pattern around the mat and let the TTL drive the flash exposure wirelessly. Our ambient exposure was set to underexpose the room by a couple of stops, so areas that were not lit by flashes would not be pitch black.
You should compare his results with mine. I confess the envy.
So, I got there early, but not early enough. By the time, I had sorted out the bracket and figured out how to figure out who was wrestling where, I had missed the morning matches of the kid I was supposed to catch. So I waited. And waited. And waited. In the meanwhile, I shot as many of the other Chapel Hill matches as I could. I figured that would give me some back-up shots as well as some experience.
What happens when you shoot with flash for eight hours? The batteries go. In the second to last Chapel Hill match, the championship round in the 119 weight class, my camera battery dies. Oh no, you say? I have a spare. Oh yes, you say? It was in my bag in the stands. By the time I got back with the fresh battery, that match was almost over. In the middle of the last match, with the kid I waited all day to shoot, I noticed that the shots were coming out dark. My flash batteries were out. The spares were in the stands. I knew that this would not be a long match, so what could I do? I switched to the built-in flash. With little impact. Argh!!!
Wrestling has its advantages. You squat in one spot near the aciton and the wrestlers are not allowed to leave the ring. But they move fast and the ref likes nothing more than to stand right in front of the action. When you do have a clear line of sight. The players have the faces in the mat or in some odd contorted position. The only thing that stands out in the viewfinder is covered in spandex and will not make the front page. You do your best and hope that the wrestler’s head does not stuck out of the frame.
Let’s see what makes the paper. I should have an update for you soon.
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