The Diver's Physique

[fjrabon]

DSC_4187 by franklinrabon, on Flickr

Thoughts on the composition here?

 

[kenwood72]

i think the DOF is too long. if it were more shallow she would stand out more. she gets lost in all of what is going on.

 

[ilikephotons]

As a general comment I think it is a nice composition. I agree with kenwood72 with the DOF being too wide. A shallower DOF would be nice to try.

 

[fjrabon]

Have a look at this link, next time you are in the pool with swimmers or divers, really take a look at how the light is on them. Some of these shots may give you some ideas.Black and White sports - Images | IMAGE Communications

How'd you get the lights like that? This was a meet where flash wasn't allowed, and the images needed to be journalistic. As awesome as your iamges are, I have no idea how I'd even begin to get that sort of lighting in the pool that the above was taken in?

 

[imagemaker46]

All the photos were shot in your average pool, no flash and shot during competition. The light is there you just have to really look for it and see it. Most of the photos were shot from the shadow side, and I was using the cleanest backgrounds I could. I have done little post with these, just made them a little more contrasty. For some of them I would find a spot were there was some back light, and use that, again from the shadow side.

 

[fjrabon]

All the photos were shot in your average pool, no flash and shot during competition. The light is there you just have to really look for it and see it. Most of the photos were shot from the shadow side, and I was using the cleanest backgrounds I could. I have done little post with these, just made them a little more contrasty. For some of them I would find a spot were there was some back light, and use that, again from the shadow side.

Ah, I got you. This pool was completely uniformly lit. In one side was the wall with all the pool records, only about 2 feet from the pool edge. The bleachers side if anything was brighter than the pool, and the other two walls on either side of the short side of the pool look exactly like the background in this picture.

I haven't been to a whole lot of pools, so I didn't even realize there was a shadow side to begin with in some of them.

 

[imagemaker46]

There is always a shadow side, try looking at the subjects from lower angles, you can line them up against lights from almost anywhere. If you take a good look at your photo and add a lot contrast, past the point where it is too dark, look at all the highlights on the diver, and light on the wall across the pool, that's good light to use. As I mentioned, really look for the light, it is there.

 

[fjrabon]

well, the brighter and darker areas mostly depended on what cycle you happened to be catching those lights. With any shutter speed over about 180, these light would catch cycles, and thus the lit and dim parts of the pool would flip. I got a few where it just so happened that the cycles came together in a good way for the photograph, on most it didn't. A couple looked like spotlights on the swimmers, which was a really cool effect. Those got sent in, and thus I can't post them here due to licensing rights (I only post stuff here that hits the cutting floor).

Not trying to make excuses for the poorly lit image, just trying to give a bit of context. It's a pretty mediocre image, I realize that., hence it being posted here.

 

[imagemaker46]

I have to say I've never had problems with lights in any pools. I don't even think about how the light cycles are when I'm shooting this kind of thing. When I shoot action, if I shoot 4-5 frames in a burst then I pick up the cycles. I spend a lot of time just watching and then pick my spot to shoot, and wait, the light never changes once I'm where I want to be, so then it's just up to how the athletes turn and move, I will play with exposures, and expose for the highlights.

 

[fjrabon]

I have to say I've never had problems with lights in any pools. I don't even think about how the light cycles are when I'm shooting this kind of thing. When I shoot action, if I shoot 4-5 frames in a burst then I pick up the cycles. I spend a lot of time just watching and then pick my spot to shoot, and wait, the light never changes once I'm where I want to be, so then it's just up to how the athletes turn and move, I will play with exposures, and expose for the highlights.

as you can probably tell from the background, this was an old, fairly decrepit charter high school pool. I've shot water polo in newer pools where this wasn't remotely an issue at all. Here, I have photos where essentially the white balance of one half the photo is a strong tungsten, and the other would need to be incandescent. The lights seem to cycle like the following:
1/180 sec on a very dim magenta, 1/180 a sec on a mid yellow, 1/180 sec on a bright blue. And each light was on its own individual cycle, so in certain photos, the color is all over the place (hence the B&W).

 

[imagemaker46]

I understand the cycles, I get that more when I shoot hockey and you can see the hot spots on the ice as well when you shoot, you can have a clean frame and then two that are way off. The thing is that I shoot most of my images really tight, I use a 300 2.8 and shooting tight does help to eliminate the cycle more than shooting loose. In black and white there is no problem at all. I've shot swimming and diving in over a 100 different pools, and some are so bad that it's 3200iso, 125th 2.8, when it gets to that point I do portraits and shoot only in a few bright spots that allow me to drop down to 1250iso, even if I'm shooting at 60th, better something than nothing.

Shooting indoors does always offer new challenges, and it's what we do with those challenges that makes or breaks our images. As my dad has always said "If you can see it, you can shoot it"