Behind the Scenes - Blue and Yellow
Over the years I’ve always been intrigued by the Red Bull Illume photo contest. The work that makes it to finals of this event is some of the greatest action sports photography from a laundry list of the best action sports and adventure photographers in the world. I always make a point of entering this contest and finding images in my collection to submit.
With the contest being run again in 2023 submitting was a no brainer. This contest only allows you to submit work created from the previous time the contest was run, so in this case anything shot after August of 2021. Usually when going through my archive I have a deep collection of images to submit, but being that I only shot a little snowboarding this season due to injury I had limited images I felt were of the caliber worth submitting.
Having some free time and always wanting to push my work I took this as a challenge to create some action sports work that was specifically planned. With most of my snowboarding work I shoot I go into the day with a plan, but due to the nature of weather and snow conditions I need to be a lot more adaptable to capture what the day presents. With this and a few others shoots I wanted to capture the exact image I had in mind.
This image of Josh skateboarding is one of those shots I created with the intent of submitting to the Red Bull Illume photo contest.
For this shoot I was using a light modifier I’d never personally worked with before. I’ve seen what the optical snoot can do, but have never actually used one for a shoot. To sum it up the snoot mounts to a light and has a lens that allows you to focus and defocus light. Within the snoot you can add a gobo to create patterns. A gobo is dark plate used to shield light and they come in a multitude of patterns from a simple circle to as complex mix of lines.
The Optical Snoot takes a lot of light, and I needed the light far away from the wall to create the pattern big enough to have Josh skateboarding in front of it. We shot in the evening so it would be darker and the ambient light wouldn’t overpower the shadows, and then I placed the snoot on my Elinchrom ELB 1200. This light has a lot of power and allowed me to project the pattern on the wall and still overpower any ambient light. It took some time to position the pattern so it was perfectly straight. Any slight movement of the flash was reflected on the wall as a large movement but once it was positioned and perfectly aligned I started to get Josh skating through.
I expected it would happen and was prepared for it, but almost immediately decided to add a second light to illuminate the skateboarding. The pattern was being projected on the wall, but also being projected on Josh skating by which led to dark shadows on part of his face. This wasn’t the look I had in mind and was an easy fix. I added an Elinchrom ELB 400 to the mix and positioned it near the wall from camera left. On this light I added a regular snoot. This doesn’t have a lens, but allows you to aim the light and control exactly where it is hitting with pretty minimal spill. I wanted this light to illuminate Josh, but not spread out and fall on the ground or the wall. Once this light was set It was a matter of skating through until we achieved the exact frame we wanted.
While shooting I ended up adding a blue gel to the optical snoot. The wall was blue, but wasn’t showing as blue as I wanted so by adding the gel I was able to emphasize this colour.
Gear
Canon R5
Canon RF 70-200 f4
Elinchrom ELB 1200
Elinchrom ELB 400
Optical Snoot with Gobo and Blue Gel
Snoot