Behind the Scenes: Backlighting with a Flash

Ben Poechman had a spot in mind he wanted to hit. He had been there a few days before and set it up, but just needed to wait for it to snow for the landing to get soft. When he reached out to me he said the feature was right at the end of the forest. This was my first day back shooting snowboarding of the 2020/2021 season and while I hadn’t shot snowboarding with strobes in a while I knew I wanted to do that for this image. The feature was close to a chairlift so it took away some of the difficulty of the logistics of hauling all the gear.

My normal set up when shooting with strobes is to have two separate backpacks. One pack has my camera set up with all my lenses and camera body along with any extra layers, avalanche gear, snacks, and other miscellaneous items that I think I need. 

The other pack has the strobe set up with the power pack, the flash head, a high performance reflector and a light stand. This pack can be heavy and cumbersome to ride with, but is manageable as long as you don’t need to do to much hiking. When snowboarding I usually wear the flash pack on my back as it is heavier and carry the camera pack on my back shoulder.

Once at the spot I had a quick look around to see where I wanted to shoot from to start. I picked an angle that was straight on to the feature, and then found a position behind another tree to create some foreground.

After finding my angle I got the light set up behind the lip to create the backlight. It took some repositioning so I wasn’t able to see it, but finally got it in the right spot. As Ben started to hit the feature a little bit of fog started rolling in and out of the trees. The backlight illuminates the particulates in the fog and will seem to glow a bit more. Not exactly the look I had in mind, but decided to work with it.

The strobe I was using for this shoot was the Elinchrom Ranger. This is an older kit at this point, but it has a lot of power, and combined with the Elinchrom Skyport Transmitter Plus trigger you can shoot faster then your normal shutter sync speed. The sync speed on my Canon is 1/200th of a second and if I were shooting at this speed you would need to rely on the flash duration to freeze action. By shooting at faster shutter speeds I could make the background darker and rely on the shutter speed to freeze the action. Camera sync speeds, flash durations, and high speed sync is a pretty in-depth topic, and isn’t always the easiest to find information on especially within sports as it is pretty niche. Happy to answer any additional questions you might have about it. Send me an email: info@bengirardi.com

Since it was pretty bright out, the pack was set pretty close to full power. When shooting with a a strobe at full power you need to wait for it to recycle so for each hit you only have one frame to get the image. With a fast sport like snowboarding you need to be pretty on it to get the frame at exactly the right moment. It took a few tries to get the exact style Ben was after for the grab, and for me to get the frame shot at the exact moment.

Once I was comfortable that I got the image I wanted, and Ben was happy with his style I found a second angle and switched up the lighting for Ben to do a different trick.

Working with strobes when snowboarding can be frustrating, but also rewarding at the same time. Since you are fully crafting the light for each shot it usually takes longer, and if something doesn’t work it is lot more time to move the entire set up and dial the light in again. While it isn’t always necessary, in my opinion the results are usually worth it as it gives you the ability to bring a punch of light to an otherwise flat day.

Gear:
Canon 5D MKIV
Canon 70-200 f4 (111mm)
Elinchrom Ranger Flash Kit
Elinchrom Skyport Transmitter Plus Trigger
Light Stand
F-Stop Lotus backpack - Camera Gear
F-Stop Tilopa backpack - Flash Gear

Settings:
1/800 sec at f4.5, ISO 400

-         

Behind the Shot series where I tell the story behind my action sports, adventure and landscape photography and dissect the techniques and gear that was used to make it.