Big Air
Parenting
A couple of months ago (maybe a year ago), the family and I tooled around Austin and we found the 9th Street BMX Trail, located on 9th Street near Lamar. Very close to our house. I flagged the site as some place I wanted to bring a camera to sometime. That time was Sunday.
Not really thinking about the BMX trail, I recently set up a very small jump for Jack in our street. Very small. He went over it a few times and seemed to have some fun, but I think he enjoyed watching me more. Kathleen had the brilliant idea (no snark, brilliant) for me to take the boys to the BMX trail on Sunday for an outing. I packed my camera gear and Jack's bike and we headed out. With the boys in tow, I didn't really think I'd get the opportunity to bust out the camera gear, but wanted to have it 'just in case'.
We watched the riders for a bit while Jack screwed up his courage. He got on his bike (not a BMX) and started over the smaller bumps. That did not go too well. 30 minutes of intensive parenting later, I managed to convince Jack to stay and watch the other riders (he never did get back on the bike). I also pulled out the camera gear. We watched one guy in particular for over an hour. I think it was a good lesson for the boys to see some more "extreme" sports, since it is unlikely that I'll be catching any big air on a bike anytime. Ever. Ben was really excited, and Jack seemed to get over the negative feedback that the fall provided. Maybe next time he will get on his bike.
Photography
I noticed a woman taking photographs of a rider. He was doing some visually interesting jumps so I asked to join in the photo-fun, which would keep my boys entertained. I got a big "no problem" from Rick and Jenn and proceeded to set up everything. I found the biggest jump and took a couple of practice shots:
That image establishes the 'studio'. I moved to the landing berm and snapped a couple of available light photos.
Compositionally fine, but the image lacks definition. The subject (Rick) should stand out more. I broke out the off-camera flash and the Pocket Wizards and took a couple of test photos (using some random bystanders) to get the exposure dialed-in. I hadn't done the off-camera thing for a while and forgot that my camera's sync speed is 1/200 - I was shooting 1/250. That mistake is the cause of the horizontal shadow in the first test image. Whoops. But it worked out OK.
Now I was ready to rock. Rick was a good great sport - he suggested places for me to stand to get the good visuals. I suspected he'd done this sort of thing before.
Artistically, the money shot is that last image. The sun in the upper right peaking through the clouds kicks butt. However, the preceding image shows Rick much better and would work for a publicity photo. All the images are located on my Flickr stream, handily collected into a set.
"Rick" is one "Rick Wetherald", a recent transplant to Austin, TX from Durango Colorado. The woman taking pictures of him is Jennifer (I think they are sweet on each other, but I'm not sure). Rick used to race professionally and seems to be jumping into the Texas cycling scene since moving here. Of course, he has a blog.
September 08, 2008 by Brent Schneeman
Posted in General | 0 Comments »
Photographs
www.flickr.com 
Go to Brent Schneeman's photostream-
Pages
-
Links
-
Feeds
-
Referers
-
Navigation