Behind the Scenes - Silhouette Bike
This idea built on a shoot I did early in the year. That shoot can be seen HERE. Skateboarding was my original idea and after we shot that I was stoked how it came out and decided to expand on the concept further. At first I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and brainstormed some ideas before randomly stumbling on flatland bmx. While scrolling through my phone I remember having seen someone post on a local Facebook group asking if anybody had built a bmx bike recently. I went back and tried to find this post and searched the group and ending up coming across a video of someone riding in Whistler. The rider in the video was good and that was when I thought flatland BMX would be a good option. I reached out to the rider, Mickael Loiodice, and after I explained my concept he was down to give it a go.
It took us some time before we were able to make our schedules align, but finally we made it happen. Since I was going for the same look as before we went back to the same location, however before shooting I had spent some time walking around the underground parking to find a slightly different spot. I had the plan of doing the wider shot that showed the garage itself so I found somewhere that had open space around that allowed for this.
Upon shooting the first thing we needed to do was hang the backdrop. Since I had done this before I didn’t even bring the pole to hang the backdrop on as I new I would be able to use the piping in the ceiling. When hanging the backdrop I made sure it was as smooth and clean as possible to limit the work I would need to do in post. This would also allow me to shoot the image where you saw the edges of the backdrop. It took a bit of fiddling, but then we got it dialed.
The three lights with the ELB 1200 in the centre and the ELB 400’s on the outside.
For this set up I used three lights. The previous time there had been a concrete pillar behind the backdrop that I needed to work around so I added a fourth light, but this time I found a location that was open behind. I set up the lights behind the backdrop evenly spaced from left to right, and positioned them so they were in the centre of the backdrop. I used one ELB 1200 and two ELB 400’s each with a High-Sync head so I could rely on shutter speed to freeze the action. The 1200 had a 7-inch reflector and the 400’s had 5-inch reflectors which both create a hard light with a wide spread. This was perfect for getting an even spread across the entire backdrop.
Each flash was set to a power level of 5 on the Elinchrom scale, which is approximately 215 watts of light per flash. Since I needed to freeze action I wanted to shoot at a faster shutter speed of at least 1/1000 or above. I change my settings a couple times throughout the shoot depending on the exact scene as some of the tricks moved faster then others and I needed a high shutter speed to fully freeze the action. I started around 1/1250 at f4, iso 160 and then when I needed it I bumped it to 1/2000 at f4, iso 320.
Once everything was dialled in and my exposure was correct we started shooting. We started with some more simple tricks and it took some time to get in the rhythm of shooting and riding. Not knowing specific tricks I relied heavily on Mickael’s expertise on what was possible. I was looking for dramatic looking tricks where the shape of riding and the bike were emphasized. Once in a rhythm we worked through a mix of tricks pretty quickly with each trick only taking a handful of tries before we captured the moment which allowed me to move around and capture a variety of angles and create a different, but similar look for each image.
After the action imagery I capture a variety of lifestyle images to complete the set of images. Overall I was stoked on how the images turned out, and really stoked to get to expand on this idea even further. Now I just need to find more sports to shoot in the same way.
View the full set of images HERE.
I can control all the lights from the transmitter on top of the camera.
All the gear packed away. Try to keep it as lean as possible for portability.
Biker: Mickael Loiodice
Gear:
Canon R5
Canon 70-200 f4
Canon 24-105 f4
Elinchrom ELB 1200 with HS head
2x Elinchrom ELB 400 with HS head
7 inch reflectors
10’x20’ white diffusion cloth