Lighting advice for today

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dancook

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Dan
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I haven't got long to make a decision.

A school want me to shoot marketing images for up to 6 sports in 45 minutes, so they can have photos for their website

· Badminton
· Trampolining
· Indoor rowing
· Netball
· Taekwondo
· Diving

With the limited time available, I may just have to work with whatever available light there is.

In my head, adding any lighting, is just going to create faff and burn time until I get it worked out - also I'll have to carry it between locations. But I'm going to be annoyed with heavy shadows on the face due to overhead lighting...

What would anyone recommend?

I could use off-camera portable studio heads with/without modifier (umbrella?) or on-camera flash for a bit of fill - either way will probably need post work to match temperatures.
 
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mike weeks said:
are they booking a professional or a man with a camera? They can not expect to get that many images in that time

Mike
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I know, they booked it last minute and said they had a window of 45 minutes to get some images.

I will tell them it is an exploratory shoot, and manage their expectations, if we get some photos they are happy with fine - but really we need to spend more time than that on each to get good quality images.
 
To put it in perspective, they were going to take a few images themselves for the least important sports if I could prioritise others.

Having just spoken to them, images will be tiny on the website alongside one's they've taken themselves - and they agree to call it exploratory.

The Netball is also outside, which will be nice..

I can come down off my self-made mountain of stress now :)
 
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your best bet is probably to have a single head on a stand that you can bounce up onto a ceiling as appropriate, but mainly work with natural light. Have some CTO (particularly half) on hand to balance if you're matching nasty indoor tungsten.
 
sk66 said:
Natural light at whatever stupid high ISO is required...or on camera flash.
Anything else would be ridiculous... actually, the whole idea is ridiculous.
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Well it didn't really go to plan anyway, only shot diving/swimming then outdoor netball before we ran out of time - it was fast action stuff, so shot at 20fps, a few repeats of each action and just used available light.
 
It seems it went a well as it was likely to.
There's probably loads you could do with off camera flash on a stand as suggested, but if you were thinking of using it anywhere near a swimming pool I'd think again...carefully.
Other than that, what Steven said.
 
Personally I don't understand how you couldn't get 6 sports done in 45 minutes. Logically I'd say you have each participants set up and ready to go in appropriate kit and shoot for 5 minutes ish on each sport?

Badminton court, net comes down as they set up trampoline on the court while you go do the netball outside. Go back do the Trampolining, then while they set up the rowing you do the diving, then back to do the rowing and Taekwondo.
That's assuming they have 1 small sports hall to do it in, but I'm guessing its quite large (given they have a pool). and can be easily split into 2. I went to a really shocking school and we had a double size sports hall that you could split into 2 courts and have a curtain up to separate the 2

Jobs a good un, off to pub for a celebratory pint.
 
keef32 said:
Personally I don't understand how you couldn't get 6 sports done in 45 minutes. Logically I'd say you have each participants set up and ready to go in appropriate kit and shoot for 5 minutes ish on each sport?

Badminton court, net comes down as they set up trampoline on the court while you go do the netball outside. Go back do the Trampolining, then while they set up the rowing you do the diving, then back to do the rowing and Taekwondo.
That's assuming they have 1 small sports hall to do it in, but I'm guessing its quite large (given they have a pool). and can be easily split into 2. I went to a really shocking school and we had a double size sports hall that you could split into 2 courts and have a curtain up to separate the 2

Jobs a good un, off to pub for a celebratory pint.
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They have a sports centre, it was all setup and a few students for each activity were organised ready to go. Some of the other activities at least had some shots by someone from the school whilst I did the two I did. I saw that the Taekwondo had skylights which would have made for pretty good lighting.

One of the shoots I did for another school was two simultaneous tournaments of rugby and hockey with 3 simultaneous games - the hockey was down and across a road in another field, and the two rubgy games were adjacent to each other. They wanted shots of each of the houses playing each of the games along with audience participation shots, I gave them exactly that - 10 minutes at each game, keep cycling that for 90 minutes.

I can still feel the stress in my body now, i'll be looking forward to that pint tonight :)
 
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DemiLion said:
I'd recommend educating your client not to take the p***.
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I'm too used to trying accommodate less than reasonable requirements, happened for over a decade in web development.

I expect more out of myself than I am probably capable (at least in the timeframe or whatever), and beat myself up for not being good enough :) it's not an overly rewarding cycle, I improve but I just keep raising the benchmark.

Part of it is learning to communicate realistic expectations, I guess it's one of those 'weaknesses' for job interviews.
 
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The problem with trying to rush PR jobs like that is that you end up with mediocre images shot for low value.

If that's what they're happy with, then fine, but otherwise they need to pay properly and allocate time to get good quality shots to promote their school.

It's all about perceived value.
 
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