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Overpowering the Sun

I play basketball on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the lunch hour. I enjoy it - the group that I play with is casual and right at my level of over-40 slowness (but what I have in slowness I make up with a lack of skill).

I've been reading a lot about flash photography and how to use it outdoors. Specifically, I'm interested in overpowering the sun, like this guy did in an article from Time Magazine (copyrighted photo, can't repro it here). Take a look at the photo of the kid. Take a look at the upper left. That's the sun up there - the freakin' sun. And the photographer managed to make a well exposed image of the kid. That's cool stuff.

"Hey, I play basketball and I've got a camera" I thought. So I brought my kit to the court and popped off a few shots.

That's the flash going off under the basket - I bungied it to the stand and sync'ed with a Pocket Wizard. It worked OK, until an errant pass whacked it and the flash wound up looking like this.

Notice the crooked hot shoe connector on the top? And if you look carefully, you can see the cracked lens on the left-hand-side of the photo. Sigh. After a bit of repairs, the flash still worked and was ready for the next outing, but not without a bit or armor.

I bungied the flash to the cage (an unused Container Store basket) so that it was suspended in the middle and bungied the radio sync (a PocketWizard) directly to the cage. That way, everything was self contained and I could move the whole assembly by moving the cage. A couple of wraps of duct tape and I was good to go.

Here is is in action. The shadows have been banished from the player's faces, but I don't think I have enough output from a single flash unit to get the exposure that I want at the distance I want. You can tell from the shadows that the sun is very bright - the "Sunny 16" rule applies here: the surroundings will be well exposed at f/16 at 1/100th of a second using ISO 100. I'm going to 1/200th (my camera's sync speed, hopefully enough to freeze some movement) so I should be able to get a good exposure of the background at f/8. But I want to darken the background. f/11 or smaller. I'm not sure I can throw out that much light. I may have to use two flashes... or even four...

October 08, 2007 by Brent Schneeman

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Tags: fitness photography