Alright, so my friend built a box and a drop in a ramp with powderpak (essentially like carpet/astroturf) and we were sessioning this box at a park in Brooklyn yesterday. Here's a picture of the setup (I know it looks crazy):


Just to give a sense of scale the drop in was about 6 feet high, the drop in distance a little over 10 feet and the box was 10 feet long by 1 foot high.

I'm really looking for ideas on how to creatively capture shots of riders hitting this since I felt my keeper ratio was pretty much slim to none yesterday. Here's one of the 'better' ones (really not too happy about it) from yesterday (mats were set up earlier when we weren't sure of potential sharp debris near the box):



Exif is (shot with 5D, 16-35L & 580EXII mounted on hot shoe):

F/6.3
1/160
17mm
500 ISO
FEC 0

At this angle I mainly shot in portrait mode to eliminate the busy background. Also I tried to show where the rider was starting and ending the trick. Going forward I might want to bump up the ISO a little more, lower the f-stop and make the shutter speed faster (to freeze the image more and also with a shallower DOF it might eliminate the busy background)

A few obstacles you must keep in mind:

1) The riders were decent but honestly not that great (myself included) since the idea was to train on this all summer long to get better by next winter

2) The setup was placed under a set of trees so we would be a little cooler during the session. This made it difficult to capture since it was super sunny (background easily blown out) while the subjects were naturally darkened by the shade.

3) Right now I only have 1 flash (580 EXII) that I attached to the hot shoe and have a Sto-fen omnibounce on it. I was mainly shooting with the 16-35L on my 5D. I tried the multi shot route but I since the flash only goes off once and at 3FPS it didn't really work that well.

I'd really appreciate any critique, comments and suggestions. Thanks!

there's a 50% chance someone else will come along and give you advice that is actually helpful...but I think this set up screams sequence...and also a shot from the drop in....some city buildings in the background would be cool for some of the hicks on the forum too...if all else fails just strap in on the box and looks steezy


you should try removing the lil kicker and nollie onto the box then run up and throw your hands at the camera and yell something very brooklyn like "shalom!" or "pizza!"

I think I'll wait for that 50% chance to come along Stefan...haha. Anyway, the idea of having buildings in the background is actually a good idea but if we really tried to do this in a remote park since if we did it in a bigger park like Central/Prospect Park we probably need a permit to do something like this. Just for you I'll shout out Boomshakalaka next time I hit the box.

frame through that fence on the side, climb up in one of the trees and shoot down, get creative with the angles

shoot longlens, from the pictures youve posted i already see a bunch of angles i would test out getting pretty far away isnt bad remember..

Thanks! Someone also suggested in another forum I get up on a ladder and shoot from a different angle. Basically he said presses look good from an angle at the same level or below the rider. Boardslides might work even from a higher angle. So maybe a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens might work in this case? If I'm shooting for afar how would you set up the lighting? Maybe a stand with a remote trigger? The flash is used more as a fill since we are under the shade of the trees.

Yeah presses you deffinately want to be level or below on. They would look like a 50-50 or a weak press from above.

i dont know too much about photography or lighting, but i really like photos with DOF and bokeh so i would use a low f stop to get a shallow DOF, and yea presses look best when you can tell they are pressing and idk about yorus flashes, but my friend who photos has all these remotes and stuff and his flashes go off form like 100-200 feet away from a remote on his camera or something, sorry im not more helpful haha i shoot video, i just spotted some nice angles

Good point.

You know what's that actually what I plan to experiment with next time. Use a shallow DOF to eliminate the clutter in the background. Only small problem is that I need to be dead on with the focus when I have shallow DOF. That definitely isn't easy. Another thing I also thought of is of all the skate/snowboard rail/box shots I usually see, I hardly ever see many with shallow DOF. Maybe it's a stylistic thing.

Yeah, the lighting will have to be important if I am standing for afar since my 580EX II cranked up to max power can only properly light subjects a few feet away before there starts to have light falloff. I'm thinking a flash stand and remote triggering might have to come into play.

So in terms of angles what are these nice angles you spotted? Just curious.

in the first picture, a nice angle if you could get up on that roof between the trees and frame the rider between the two trunks

another angle would be if you could climb up into one of the trees

you could also maybe get close to the fence with a fisheye if you have one and frame with the fence

go to the opposite side of the drop in from where the fence is and shoot low and try to use the trees once again and frame the rider in the sky

im not sure what else is around there, but i like thins that add to the depth of the picture as a whole so stuff in the background and froeground, but then also think of composition, like all the tree trunks being vertical + the fence posts being vertical and the box being horizontal, could do something cool with that

This is quite interesting. I think I can probably create a similar angle by standing on a ladder behind or close the fence


I do not have a fisheye but I was planning to buy one specifically for uses such as this. Using the fence/trucks to frame I think is a pretty cool idea.



I like this angle a lot. Definitely will try this and see if I can achieve this without having the sky get blown out in terms of exposure.

How much is that and could you get it at like home depot? I bought turf last week and it sucked lol. Do you hit it up dry or soap and water?

legit summer setup

My friend spent about $400-500 on the Powderpak material (which covered the entire drop in and also the run out). The run out to some extent I thought was unnecessary since a basic blanket or cloth would have worked fine. Powderpak you can order online (the company I think is based out of Georgia). The topshet for the box was bought off Ebay (forget the name of the plastic) and the wood my buddy bought (probably from Lowes or some hardware store). The metal structure that holds up the drop in platform my buddy found at a scrapyard I think.

You can hit it up dry but we thought it was a tad slow for our setup. Basically people could make it halfway on the box dry. So we ended up using a little soap and water. Now we could fix the problem by:

1) Increasing the inclination of the drop in (it was about 45 degrees)
2) Shorten the flat section of the drop in (it was about 4-5 feet)
3) Shorten the box

Personally if I had to make a choice I would go with #2. I'm sure skill played a factor into this too.

That is a legit setup!!!! I think its going to be hard to make that look cool though just because its snowboarding out of its natural environment. I cant remember off the top of my head seeing a carpet setup picture that really caught my eye. So your really gonna have to work for that one, get creative with your angles, I dont know if you have flashes or lights, but you could try some different things with those. Dont worry about it to much though, just get some good practice in now snapping some shots, and then when winter roles around you'll be that much more prepared...but the best thing you can do right now is just try and get some creative angles going...

That's what I was a little afraid of. As you said, creative angles might be the saving grace...that or maybe I'll have a friend run next to the rider with a billboard sized picture of a mountain...haha.

I only have a 580EX II right now. Definitely have to use a flash as a fill since we are under the shade. My deal was if I stand on a ladder or something as some people have suggested I'm definitely going to need some stands and a remote trigger.

Damn that shits expensive. I was lookingfor white turf but they only have green and blue. It is a sick set up, im jealous. I bought two 6x8 sheets of turf and loaded it with soap and water and it sucked nuts. I think it could have been our drop in though, didn't have money to buy wood so i took a piece of staging that was at my house and stacked it on two tires lol. The coolest trick that was thrown out was my tailblock i got halfway through the rail once.

dude, wrong section, theres already a "why snowboardings becoming gay" thread. someone move this cause this is the gayest shit ive ever seen.

serialroberge

that ramp looks legit. we built a ramp in bakerriders backyard but it had shitty turf so we had to keep it wet to use it and we made the box out od plexiglass

good man its SNOWboarding and we are on SNOWperception

So we had our session #2 this past weekend. Shot mainly with the fisheye this time mainly standing on top of a ladder (about 3-4 feet above the ground) or kneeling down near the end of the box. Here are some shots:







Overall pretty disappointed with the shots. It was not easy controlling the flash standing on top of the ladder. When I moved the ladder from one side to the other (so I could shots of the face for regular/goofy riders) the lighting was pretty different. On top of that ETTL mode I use on the flash for low light photography capped my shutter speed at 1/200 seconds which was to say the least too slow. Really need to practice using the flash's manual mode so I can shoot with higher shutter speed next time. Tried to pan some shots so I think I will try that as well. Any more ideas on how I might be able to take better/more creative shots? Obviously we all understand that with skill being a major limitation (I was falling all over the place) it is not the easiest to get good looking shots.

You need to work on your composition and angles. These pictures are just kind of... Boring?

Oh absolutely. Thanks for pointing that out. Composition is definitely an issue mainly because there’s just too much junk in the foreground/background. I think next week I may try either panning or maybe shooting with a tighter frame to eliminate this issue. Definitely need to get better with using the flash.

As for it being boring I guess it’s just the nature of the beast…1) We’re not that skilled to pulling off ridiculous tricks 2) I’m still learning as a photog and 3) We’re trying to snowboard in the middle of the park during summer…haha.

I tried the fisheye shots on the ladder that someone here suggested. It’s not a bad idea at all but there are definitely problems in execution on my part. I’m curious if next week I should maybe focus less on the tricks and more on the riders. Maybe getting tight frames of the riders faces/expressions etc. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

When you are dealing with average riders on the hill or even average skaters what kind of a creative approach do you guys usually take? This is assuming your subjects can’t bust out crazy tricks.