1st Try at MX - Brought 9 Speedlights To Make it More Complicated :)

jhelms

This was my first try shooting bikes; I brought a bunch of speedlights (2 900's, 6 800's and a 28) and split them up with some other shooters - they were all set to 1/8 power.

Here's the album link on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=257624&l=0e251be19c&id=66374719840

A few that I liked from the shoot; c&c definitely welcome (next time I want to get more shots from in front of the rider)


1 - father / son riding


2 - jumping into mud chunks


3 - posed, true Georgia red clay


4 - posed, lighting and editing for subject


5 - head on jump


6 - looking at the camera


7 - slinging mud


And these two are very similar, I can't really decide which one I like best:
8a - sliding


8b - sliding


BTS / Setup 1


BTS / Setup 2

ian408

Of the slider series, #8b for sure. It's the eyes.

A lot of these look unevenly lit. I'm not sure if the lights are below the rider or you just don't have enough spread? How are your flashes configured? Is it one of those quad mounts? What are the zoom settings on the flash?

jhelms

ian408 wrote: »

Of the slider series, #8b for sure. It's the eyes.

A lot of these look unevenly lit. I'm not sure if the lights are below the rider or you just don't have enough spread? How are your flashes configured? Is it one of those quad mounts? What are the zoom settings on the flash?

Good comment on the lighting - could've been a couple of things. I tried to get the lights as high as possible and had all the flashes zoomed to the widest setting (without the flip down diffuser until we started losing light around just before sunset, then I flipped down the WA diffuser).

- 4 SB's were mounted to a Lightware Direct FourSquare on a Manfrotto stand, fully extended (10+ ft)
- 3 SB's mounted to a Lastolite tri-mount on a 10 ft stand
- 2 SB's mounted to a cheap adorama.com dual bracket on a 10 ft stand

When possible, I tried to somewhat balance the lights - 4 on one side, 5 on the other side (or spread them out a bit)

Even with the tallish stands, the bikes were easily above the light much of the time. Next time I'd like to have a voice-activated light stand; but that would be interesting since I did hang 2 Quantum Turbo3 battery packs to the quad-flash setup stand towards the end.

ian408

You could pole mount those so the lights can be effectively moved around by the VAL.