The dog is my 8 year old Brindle Boxer, 'Brittany'. She paddles with me a lot! She and I enjoy standup paddleboarding, kayaking, and even jet skiing. It is difficult to elude her when I want to go out without her. When I lived on a lake she would jump the fence to get on the kayak or paddleboard.
I was fairly concerned that voters would not believe that this is a self portrait. It is, but it wasn't easy to pull off, especially at the last minute. I actually made up my mind to do this only about two hours before sunset and the last shot that I took, the one I ended up using, was taken a lot later than I had intended.
I used two Alienbee 800's and the new Vagabond Mini Lithium battery. I used Pocket Wizards to remotely trigger the flash which was set to rear curtain sync just in case there was any motion blur. Actually, I considered "zooming by" and capturing the motion trail behind us, but that was an added complication that I chose not to mess with.
I set the camera to interval shooting, 9 shots, once every 10 seconds. I figured out how to do this on the fly once I was there and I was lucky that I managed that. I didn't attempt to set a delay, so the sequence started immediately and I got some shots of my back side as I dashed to the board and my dog. I kept pushing the board out into the bay as I reset the sequence, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, light power, and while I kept messing with one of the lights that was intermittent. I tried to do this before the wind blew the board all the way back to shore where Brittany might decide that she had had enough and abandon the shoot. She didn't...she is a fantastic dog...the best that I've ever had!
As it turns out, one of the lights did not fire in this final shot and it probably wouldn't have worked out as well if it did. I'm fairly happy with the lighting that resulted.
I did end up processing for three separate exposures, one for the sky, one for us, and one for the water.
Here are a couple of outtakes from the shoot and some of Brittany in the past:
Brittany waiting patiently for me but wondering why we aren't paddling yet:
Getting on quickly before the next shot in 10 seconds:
Neither of us fell off the board even once:
Dashing out to the board as the first shot in the sequence catches me:
Getting our balance back:
The original challenge entry straight from the camera:
I use the same standup paddleboard to get out in The Everglades for photography:
Again, in The Everglades:
How I carry my camera gear on the board:
Brittany and my son, Chris, kayaking 4 years ago:
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Yak, you are on one serious roll! The set up off this, and the difficulty level of a self portrait with dog on paddle board are insane - congrats on pulling it off! And it is good to see what you look like :)
Great use of fill flash, and vivid colors, technically flawless. I wonder if you had any where both you and the dog were looking in the same direction to give it a more unified sense of purpose. Top ten
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