Spot light at wrestling

Rene`

Tomorrow at my son's wrestling match they will be celebrarting Senior Nite. (And he is a Senior.) They have a flood light that they use to light the mat. Could someone please look at the pictures at the following link and make suggestions as to how I can take some decent pics?

http://memoriesbyrene.smugmug.com/gallery/2421833#126998541

Rene`

I really need some input here!

Rene` wrote:

Tomorrow at my son's wrestling match they will be celebrarting Senior Nite. (And he is a Senior.) They have a flood light that they use to light the mat. Could someone please look at the pictures at the following link and make suggestions as to how I can take some decent pics?

http://memoriesbyrene.smugmug.com/gallery/2421833#126998541

pathfinder

Rene'

I am not sure what specifically you are asking. I see the flood lighting in your gallery - sometimes it is frontal, sometimes side lighting, and sometimes backlighting. This leads to shadows in the image and underexposure sometimes.

I think my suggestion, if your camera/flash is able, ( you do not list your specific camera in your profile nor your flash equipment) - I would shoot in Manual mode with your flash as your main light about 1 - 1.5 stops brighter than the ambient flood lighting. This will allow you to control the exposure with your flash, and use the ambient flood lighting for fill.

This will diminish the variation between lit and unlit areas as seen in some of your images in your gallery. You may prefer to shoot with the ambient flood as sidelighting or backlighting, and your flash as your main light.

In the Canon system, this is easy to do, shooting in Av mode with the flash in ETTL. If Pentax has a similar modality, that exposes the subject by the flash, and the background by the ambient lighting. Manual mode gives further control over the balance of foreground lighting with background lighting. Aperture controls the flash lighting and shutter speed controls the amount of ambient lighting in the image.

Is this helpful?

SloYerRoll

I'm pretty sure you nailed what Rene is looking for. You just don't have enough pieces to the puzzle.

Rene,
Once we figure out what kind of flash you have. You'll also want to gel the flash. This isn't tough but will make a huge difference in how the final pictures look. Do you live in an area w/ a good photography shop around you? You could probably even grab a sample for what your doing and it would be fre eit you talked it up

Scott_Quier

- gel the flash.

But, I would use the flash for fill rather than as main light. This will cause the photos to look more like you actually saw at the event. The down-side is that you will need to pay more attention to the lighting to make sure that you correctly expose for the ambient.

As you will find as you continue shooting, there is more than one way to make a photography - the path you take is governed by the vision you have for the photograph.

SloYerRoll

The one good part about getting your flash dialed in is that once it's dialed in. You can just leave it be and shoot away.
The only thing you want to do is stay the same distance away from yout subjects if possible. This will help you a ton in post.

Cheers,
-Jon