The Sports Photo Guy

In February of 2009, I had my first image published in Sports Illustrated.  It provides a great lesson in location lighting with Nikon Advanced Wireless Lighting.

Holmes Twins - SI 2/9/09

I had very little time to set up the shot.  SI had sent a photographer earlier in the week to shoot VMI’s Holmes twins, who had recently broken the NCAA Division I scoring record by a pair of twin brothers.  But they decided at the last minute they wanted a portrait of the brothers in their cadet uniforms.  VMI’s SID referred them to me.

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Not a problem.  A pair of SB-600′s, a couple of light stands and umbrellas, and I was in business.  We set up in four different locations: inside the arena, up against a blank wall, and two outdoors with VMI’s massive, Gothic barracks as a backdrop.

The D300′s built-in flash was the controller unit.  The basketball arena was lit up like game day; instead, I wanted to create a dimmer ambiance to go with the fact that the twins were in their cadet uniforms.  I used an exposure compensation trick that was made so much easier with Advanced Wireless Lighting.

Full frame of published image

To tame the harsh arena lighting and get the effect I wanted, I dialed in -2.0 stops of exposure compensation on the camera.  Then, to bring the foreground exposure back up (the twins), I increased flash exposure for both of the SB-600′s (which were placed about 8 feet to my left and right, and slightly in front of me) to +1.3 stops.  Since flash exposure compensation is cumulative with exposure compensation set on the body, the subject would be slightly underexposed (to saturate colors) while the rest of the scene (which I wanted to dim into the background) was fairly heavily underexposed.  Because it is so easy to control remote lighting wirelessly with the D300, I had time to experiment with a few combinations of settings before dialing in the one I liked.

The same technique can be used outdoors.  By lowering overall exposure, then using positive flash exposure compensation to bring the subject “back up,” you can deeply saturate blue skies and other background colors.  This was my favorite shot of the group that I did for SI; -1.0 EV exposure compensation, +2.0 EV flash compensation, 1/2000 @ f4.5.

Holmes twins outtake

Of course, sometimes your efforts all go for naught–in this case, one of my outdoor shots was subsequently published by the basketball magazine SLAM with an article on the twins for their August 2009 issue.

SLAM Aug '09

Nonetheless, to my mind a pair of SB-600′s and a couple of light stands are the best, inexpensive location lighting tools you can own.  For about the cost of a single new SB-900, you get a pair of strobes and an amazing level of control thanks to Nikon’s Creative Lighting System.

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