Posted by Cleggy on Mar 14, 2010 in
PR
So today I drove down to the County Fermanagh lakelands to do a wee shoot with the lovely Julianne Elliott, big sister to Josh Elliott the teenage rising star of Irish Motorcycle Racing who will be competing on the World championship stage in 2010. Whilst there I also shot some images to be used throughout this season for Josh’s press releases.
The Weather had been good all week and luckily today was equally as nice, though quite cool temperatures due to the stiff breeze. I arrived at my destination at approximately half past Two which gave us ample time to have a natter and scout out a few locations for doing some shots whilst the Sun was still high and the light harsh.
Our first shooting location was in the grounds of Florence Court House a National Trust property.
I used shallow depth of field from a wide aperture to focus the attention on Julianne.
1/1250th f3.5 85mm
A shady Woodland area provided a great setting for this next image.
1/2000th f2.8 85mm
1/2500th f5 85mm
One remote flash helped balance the exposure with the ambient light for this image of Josh sitting on a Cannon with Florence Court House behind him.
1/100th f8 55mm
We then travelled a short distance to Enniskillen Town to take create some images in the location of Enniskillen Castle. By now the sun was providing much warmer light, though still quite harsh and I had to use remote Nikon SB800 flashes to balance the exposure.
If you would like me to do a Photo shoot with you, get in touch and we can discuss a location and fee.
Tags: County Fermanagh, Enniskillen, Enniskillen Castle, Fermanagh, Florence Court, Florence Court House, Josh Elliott, Julianne Elliott, Motorcycle racing, Nikon, Nikon SB800, SB800
Posted by Cleggy on Feb 27, 2010 in
Bike Racing,
PR
Bushmill’s CCTV Engineer Coyles Wright sounded me out a few months ago about doing a few Photographs of the new Race Team that he was putting together to contest the Irish Motorcycle racing championships. All the pieces of the jigsaw fell in to place and a date was set to do the shoot.
The evening before the shoot (last night) Coyles sent me a text message panicking about the heavy Snow that was falling up his part of the Country but we agreed to go ahead with the shoot and luckily the next morning (today) dawned without a major fall of Snow. With the forecast for a bright afternoon I was confident the shoot would go ahead as planned.
Coyles choice of location for the shoot was the famous ‘Dark Trees’ near Armoy which have been Photographed my numerous Photographers over the years. I immediately started thinking about the location and whether to try and shoot it all available ambient light or to introduce some flash light to the Photographs and whether or not everyday traffic would be an issue. If using flash I knew I would need to be able to hide the flashes and light stands so that they did not intrude in to the scene.
Coyles assured me it was a quiet Road with very little traffic, but on the day we were constantly having to push the bikes to one side to allow the free flow of traffic. I initially fired off a few frames using just the available light, but I soon realised that it was not illuminating both race bikes and riders evenly which was then my cue to extend the light stands and power up the Nikon SB800 flashes.
1/250th f5.6 AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED
The addition of some artificial flash light and a tighter composition made for a much stronger image.
Because these images were shot specifically for a press release to be sent to the Biking press I knew that a ‘mugshot’ of each racer would also be required.
Coyles Wright
Michael McKinley
Below is a lighting diagram explaining how these images were created.
Tags: AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED, Armoy, Bushmills, Coleraine, Coyles Wright, Irish, Michael McKinley, Motorcycle, Motorcycle racing, Nikon, Photographs, SB800
Posted by Cleggy on Feb 13, 2010 in
Motocross,
PR Early this morning I set of for Desertmartin to take more Motocross Photographs however before all the on-track action got going I done a quick Photoshoot with Jason Martin and his KTM 250 Motocross bike.
One Nikon Camera and Lens, Two SB800 flash guns.
1/160th f6.3
Tags: Desertmartin, Jason Martin, KTM, Motocross, Nikon, Photographs, SB800
Posted by Cleggy on Dec 21, 2009 in
Bike Racing As previously mentioned in this blog posting I recently had the opportunity at very short notice to join in on a photo shoot for Irish Racer magazine. At the time I was told that the shots were for Kirk Jamison’s monthly column as a follow up to a previous press release to say that Kirk would be riding for Tim Martin’s MAR-Train race team in 2010. I had agreed not to publish the images online until the magazine was in the Shops.
The first shot image that I created was of Kirk and Tim down in the workshop. Upon entering the workshop I immediately scanned the room for a shooting location that would give me a clean shot with not too much distraction in the background, whilst also assessing the quality of the light within the workshop.
1/60th f7.1 50mm
The interior lighting consisted of a few flourescent tubes and the light levels on this cold, wet, winter’s night were far from brilliant for Photography so I knew I would have to call upon Nikon’s trusty SB800 speedlights to provide some extra oomph to the light, but small light sources produce harsh light and so I also grabbed a White shoot-through umbrella to increase the apparent size of the light source (relative to the subject aka Tim and Kirk) which would also help to soften the light. (Nikon’s SB600 or SB900 speedlights could also have been used if you don’t own an SB800)
There was a conveniently located empty Motorcycle work bench where I had planned to create the image from and I utilised that to get myself up approximately Two feet higher so that I could eliminate most of the ceiling lights; and shoot more or less at eye level with Kirk who was sat astride one of Tim’s race bikes which was itself on top of yet another Motorcycle work bench.
Below is the lighting setup diagram for the above image.
I then left my colleague Stephen Henderson to take a head ‘n shoulders mugshot of Kirk and a few shots of him on a mini-moto machine before we all went back in to Tim’s Kitchen for a nice big mug of Tea where I then shot a few candid images of Kirk and Tim enjoying ‘a bit of banter’.
I didn’t know at the time that the magazine was also going to be running a separate feature on Tim Martin and so in these images I focussed on Kirk Jamison. Had I of been informed otherwise I would have taken a few images where I had focussed on Tim. Either way it didn’t matter too much as both images were published.
1/60th f4 50mm
Tags: Irish Racer Ma, Kirk Jamison, Kitchen, MAR-Train racing, Nikon, SB800, SU800, Tim Martin
Posted by Cleggy on Apr 7, 2009 in
Bike Racing,
PR One motorbike racer who took me up on my free sponsors portfolio photo shoot was James ‘Jammers’ Upton. Jammers was only too happy to pose for the camera.
We waited until after racing had been completed and luckily the weather ‘played ball’ and gave us a nice late evening sunset to assist us to create some really cracking images.
1/250th f9
For the above shot I used three Nikon flash guns (2 x SB900 and 1 x SB800) and controlled them remotely from my Nikon D300 camera with Nikon’s excellent SU800 infra red flash controller.
Tags: D300, Jammers, Nikon, SB800, SB900, SU800
Posted by Cleggy on Apr 1, 2009 in
PR A short while back Doc John Hinds of the Motorcycle Union of Ireland medical team appealed to photographers attending the new race license holders training seminars, at Kirkistown race circuit, to capture a few photographs of his Honda Fireblade for possible publication in an upcoming issue of Performance Bikes magazine.
Never one to miss an opportunity I hastily arranged a quick shoot with John’s bike at the end of the days on-track tuition. I used a couple of Nikon SB800 flashes and the Nikon SU800 flash controller, and came away with some great images, which I then emailed to John to forward to the magazine.
Happily the magazine’s contributing editor Kar Lee was suitably impressed with the photos and has published one of them in the May issue of Performance Bikes, in shops now!
Tags: D300, Fireblade, Honda, Performance Bikes, SB800, SU800