Back in the office after being on the road awhile. The weather is starting to warm up in Fort Collins, so more and more bikers are hitting the roads. I decided to photograph a local rider near the foothills the other day. Since I think of road biking as a fast high energy sport, I decided to shoot a really edgy image.
To accomplish this I used 5 Elinchrom Rangers, 4 heads with 10 or 20 degree grids, and one head with a small softbox. Two gridded heads were aimed directly at him from the side. Two more gridded heads were aimed from behind to hit his backside. The softbox was powered down just to fill in light on his face, but not wash out the effect of the edgy gridded strobes. No problem getting separation of his colored jersey, a little harder with his dark legs.
I shot this with a long lens, the Nikon 200-400mm to narrow the angle of view and crop out the lights and background. The trick being so far away was getting my timing right when the rider came riding through the right spot. Tech; Nikon D3, 200-400mm, ISO 100 at 1/160 at F18. Elinchrom Rangers used with A and S heads, 10 and 20 degree heads, and one square 24″ Elinchrom softbox. Skyport wireless system used to trigger the flashes.
