Capturing skate park rider silhouettes during sunset
Inspired by a portrait taken by my son, I headed down to the local skatepark to see if I could replicate his shot for MasteringPortraitPhotography.com
Watch the video to see what’s involved in capturing fast-moving riders silhouetted against the setting sun, from timing to lighting and – of course – health and safety.
Transcript
Hi, I’m Paul Wilkinson from mastering portrait photography.com and in this video we’re gonna talk about these three images where we silhouetted, uh, A BMX rider, uh, a skateboarder and a scooter rider. I’m sure there are proper names for that and I apologize to the entire skate community ’cause I’ve got it wrong.
However, what is interesting from us was. Creating some images.
The reason we’re going down to the skate park is I wanted to create some really interesting images. Of riders silhouette against a beautiful sky. Got a beautiful sunset. And this particular evening we got the sunset. We had everything we wanted and I had a whole plethora of riders down there, which is great.
And I wanted to replicate a shot that my son actually took. A brilliant shot he took of A BMX rider performing a trick, silhouette against a sunset. And I thought, do you know what, that’s such a great thing to be able to do. Um, and although he’d done it brilliantly, it’d be great if we could explain how it’s done.
So we settled down the skate park and worked with some of the riders down there To do this, the first thing you’ve gotta do is to figure out how you’re gonna get a silhouette. And of course, a. Silhouette essentially means that the light lighting, the subject is all coming towards the camera. There’s no light hitting the visible bit of the subject.
So if, if you have a camera pointing at me and I shone all the light from my back to you and there’s low light hitting my face, I would be in shadow. I’m not in shadow because the lights are hitting my face here. And so you always do it with the sun. Pointing towards you, so you look at the sun and figure out what can go on in front.
We then used very, very fast shutter speed and also a very large depth of field. So I’m shooting about F 7.1, F eight, around there at 3000th of a second at about ISO 100. It’s actually quite a bright evening, but because the light from the sky is all coming to towards me that there’s a darker sky behind me, very little light gets to hit the rider who I have in the frame.
When I hit the button at 3000 a second, whatever’s in front of it, it’s. Such a fast snapshot, everything freezes. All I’ve gotta do is figure out firstly where to stand so that I’m safe. Remember, I’ve got people hurtling around me, and the last thing I want someone to do is either hit me and damage me, obviously my priority, but also trip over some of my care.
I step back into the path of a rider and send them hurtling. So we’ve had to work with the riders to get this safe and doable. I’ve then looked at what they’re doing and some of the guys we actually worked with and said, could you do that again? Some of the guys who’ve just watched the channels as they run through the skate park and say, okay, if I position myself here, I’m not in anyone’s way.
There’s an amazing sunset behind and if they go up and over the bowl, they’ll be airborne and I’ll be able to capture this image. So we’ve just waited. The guys have ridden and I’m just, usually what I’m doing is trying to figure out that the point in the apex. So as they come up, they ride the curl and at the highest point, that’s the apex of the trip is that’s when I’ll freeze it.
Occasionally you need to do it a different way round. So if you look at the scooter rider, what was really important, it might not be the apex of the trick, but it’s the bit where his grab is on his deck. So he’s reached down, he’s grabbed it. That’s the bit I’ve frozen. ’cause that’s such an iconic position for a rider to be in.
And that’s it. That’s the trick. You wait, you watch, and as they come up with a very fast shut speed, a very large depth of field, everything’s in focus. The sky looks amazing. You hit the button and you freeze it, and you just get these beautiful shots. You’ve enjoyed this video. There are plenty more on mastering portrait photography.com.
Hop across there and until next time, take care.
Right in, uh, our priority to, sorry. And you take this amazing image and I wanted to,
I ate that.