Went down to Millennium on Thursday to shoot for this challenge. I had borrowed my friend's D100 for 2 days. Man did I have fun. Skateboarders love preforming for the camera. I don't find it hard to get along with skaters as I used to skate myself (I was never too good though).
I expect this to do WAY better than any of my other entries before it. I hope I don't get docked too much for the entire arm not being in the frame.
Tons of post on this one:
- Convert From RAW
- Curves
- Saturated
- Brightness/Contrast
- USM
- Extended top of photo a bit to add space between top of head and edge of photo
- Created duplicate layer of photo
- Adjusted brightness of lower layer
- Mask layered the top layer to just brighten his face
- Erased shadow of skater off pavement
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I went through a bunch of your skate photos and figured itd be easier to make one long comment on one picture rather than a buncha comments on a bunch of pictures.
Composition. Rule of thirds applies. Try to frame the skater in one of the 'thirds crossings.' You did it well here, but chopped off an arm. Make sure you dont lose any limbs, or body parts for that matter. I saw in a few other pics you cropped from the waist down. In general, it shows the trick, but you dont know who did it. Generally frowned upon in the skate community.
Lenses. Someone told me if you dont use fisheye, dont use anything under about 50mm. I took it to heart. Well, sorta. The message they tried to get across is, if youre not gonna shoot 'long lens' dont shoot with anything but a fisheye. Fisheyes make tricks look bigger and better. Wide angles are also generally frowned upon. I use a 35mm prime lens when not shooting fisheye, but with the crop factor it has a field of view of an almost 50mm lens. Other than that, I use a 8mm Peleng fisheye and a Canon 70-200 2.8L lens.
Skate Photogs also commonly use flashes. Off camera flashes make skate photographs look great. I personally use 2 off camera Vivitar 285 flashes triggered by pocket wizards. I meter these flashes with a Minolta IVF flash meter and then just shoot away.
Timing. Depends on the trick. Look at skate magazines to see the proper timing for different tricks or just ask the skaters if you truly arent sure when youre at a spot.
Hope this helps, if you have any other questions just PM or IM me.
I like the angle and how you captured the moment. The kids watching in the background add to the shot. Overall, well done. What would make it even better would be to lose the orange cone, and the horizon looks a bit tilted down towards the left.
I think you should move that cone about 6 inches to the left. Just kidding. ;^) Nice capture of stopped motion. Kind of with his hand wasn't missing, and I find the kids in the background distracting a little.
the cone is an obvious distraction; if it wasn't so bright it might make a good symmetrical counter device type thing to the lad in the air. but being such a lurid orange, i just find it overpowering and is vying equally for attention with you main subject. it really would have been worth cropping just a millimeter above it. i like the presence of the bridge though, it complements in terms of colour, angle, and it helps convey a greater sense of height achieved by the skate boarder. top half = 9, bottom half = 5, so an average of 7
I like the photo, I would have liked to see all of his other hand and the face is a little dark but I really like the way you got the others in the back ground watching and the cone and bridge add some noice contrasting colors.
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