Combine Jump 1
Last Friday, I did a last minute shoot for the paper. It ended up being cut from Sunday’s paper and did not make it into today’s, so I suspect it has past its sell-by date. It was a challenging shoot (aren’t they all?), so I will write it up here. I did some lighting attempts, which I will sicuss here. I will cover the rest in a few days.
The shoot started as a fundraiser for the local high school girl’s soccer team, then was switched to the girl’s lacrosse game, which was canceled, and finally ended up on the prep session for the National Underclassmen Combine. The Combine is some sort of training system for high school football players both to prepare and get exposure for college recruitment. Unfortunately, the big session are on Saturday and Sunday. The editor wanted the images on Friday night, so I was stuck shooting the handful of kids at sunset on Friday rather that the full attendance over the regular sessions.
At one point, as the sun’s setting was lowering ambient light levels, I got out my Vivitar and my wireless trigger to try to light up the scene. The trigger were very unreliable. This was so frustrating that I did some surgery on the the trigger later that night, as described in Wireless Trigger Mod.
I had a bit more luck getting some light on another leap that the athletes were practicing.
I was able to get some light into the shadows on their faces.. I had the Vivtar on the ground pointing up at a wide angle to try to catch the whole line. Not as much success as I would have liked.
Perhaps I shouldhave put the light on the far side, but the trigger was not giving me that much distance.
But I did get this last shot, which was a fair success except for the harsh shadow cast by the arms onto the faces. I should have had the flash on a stand and probably with an umbrella to soften the light a bit.
In general I should have had a couple of lights to even out the fill flash across the line
Either way, here is the slide show of all the shots from the day.
If you find this post useful or interesting, please consider buying me a cup of coffee.
If you are interested in joining our mailing list, please submit your email below. 
