Behind the Scenes - Silhouette Skate
From the beginning I knew I wanted to do something with the pillars, but I wasn’t exactly sure how this composition was going to look until we got to shooting.
This idea lived in my head for a while. When I first thought about it I was hurt, on crutches, and spending most of my time on the couch. With all this time to brainstorm I was able to come up with ideas I was excited about but had no ability to actually execute them. Therefore I sat on this one for a while and figured out the logistics of making it work.
The first thing I needed to do to make this work was figure out a large white transparent backdrop. I figured a 12’ x 12’ scrim would work but being in Pemberton it isn’t necessarily practical for rentals driving to the city multiple times for gear didn’t seem to make sense to me. I ended up finding some 5’ x 20’ diffusion cloth online and got a few pieces of this. While the quality wasn’t necessarily as good it would work for what I needed. I got a local guy to sew them together and had a 10’ x 20’ diffusion cloth that was transparent so I could light from the back.
The biggest challenge for this shoot was lighting the backdrop so the light had an even spread and didn’t have any hot spots where the flashes were placed. I knew this could easily be fixed in post-production but wanted to get it as close to right in-camera as possible. Obviously, my fabric had a seam from sewing it together but I had no way around this and just had to deal with it. I wasn’t sure at first but after a couple of test shots with a smaller piece of fabric at home, I knew this would be achievable.
The cloth hung from some piping. While it was never perfectly white it was close and the adjustments needed to make it fully white were relatively easy. More relying on burning and dodging than any clone stamping.
The next thing was finding a location. Since I wanted the skateboarder silhouetted shooting in bright conditions wouldn’t work as the skater would be lit by ambient light. I thought about doing it at night but ended up opting for utilizing an underground parking lot and being able to easily overpower the ambient light.
I had brought C-stands and a long pole to hang the backdrop, but once getting there I opted to go for piping in the parking lot we were in. This was right at the ceiling honestly just seemed easier. We got it up smoothed as many wrinkles as possible and then weighted the bottom so it wouldn’t move as Jon skated by.
The four lights placed behind the cloth and a reflector on the side to stop light from spilling around.
It was a fast trick and it took a few tries to get the timing exactly right for the best style.
Next, we got to setting up the lights. Since I wanted this to be as even as possible and was lighting a big area I used a bunch of lights. We ended up having 4 Elinchrom light kits behind the backdrop. 1 ELB 1200, 2 ELB 400 and a Quadra kit. All the power settings were identical on each flash and we positioned them at equal distances across the back of the backdrop. Each flash had a 7-inch reflector on it. This allowed for the biggest spread of light on the backdrop. While it did make a slight hotspot, the only other option I saw was putting a large softbox on each head, but unfortunately, I didn’t have the gear for that.
For this shot, I relied on the HS technology which gives a slow flash duration. This creates light on the scene but you still need to use a fast shutter speed to freeze action. I used a shutter speed of around 1/1250th and was able to get a sharp image of the motion.
Once all the gear was set we got to the skating. The skater, Jon Martin, got to warming up and ollieing over the trash can. Once the light, backdrop and my settings were dialled in we were pretty quick to get the shot I was after. It only took a few tries before Jon did one that had a style he was happy with.
The original idea was to only shoot Jon with the solid white background, but when planning I knew I wanted to shoot with the surrounding environment as well. I didn’t have an exact plan for this, but once set up I liked the pillars being part of the composition. The contrast they added gave a slight sense of space and that ended up being my favourite shot from the session.
Skater: Jon Martin
Camera Assist/BTS Videos: Craig Barker
Gear:
Canon R5
Canon 70-200 f4
Elinchrom ELB 1200
Elinchrom ELB 400 2x
Elinchrom Ranger Quadra
7 inch reflectors
10’x20’ white diffusion cloth