Mountain Bike Photos – a la Strobist

I don’t end up with tons of time these days to shoot things for fun, so when my brother Paul showed up yesterday with a surprise day off and asked if I wanted to join him for an afternoon in the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, how could I refuse? but, still being extremely sore from my bike park visit last Saturday, I decided to take it a bit easy, and take some gear along to try and can a few shots for fun.  Turned out that I was having such a good time that we only stopped twice to shoot a quick shot.

I wanted to do a little strobist thing in the trees, to reduce the ambient, and light Paul comming off a little rock drop on the trail.  I was reminiscing a bit about shooting film, as I realized that the D40x I brought, combined with the strobes would only be fast enough to shoot one frame.  For about 4 min set up, I think I got a decent one.

Shot with 2 SB-80DX units on slave mode both behind the action, pointing 45° towards the camera at full power.  one on the rock, camera left, and one balanced on a tree branch camera right (you can see the flare on the right side of the frame).  The remote strobes were triggered by a SB-28 at 1/2 power on the hot-shoe from about 10m (30 feet) away.  exposure was 5.6 @ 1/200th for a bit of motion blur shot at about 170mm.  A bit of high pass filter for added drama.

Probably not mag cover material, but really fun for a quick little 5 min shoot.  I can’t say how good it feels just to get out and shoot something different for a change.  It really is important to go out a do something creative just for fun.  We had a blast biking yesterday, and I have inspired myself to dream up a couple of more produced bike shots to try and pull off before the end of the summer. 

Grab your camera, and go shoot something new, just for fun!