Here is a shot of Ohio State’s Chelsea Davis, the reigning NCAA 3-meter springboard diving champ. As soon as I got the assignment, I began brainstorming how I could shoot this portrait. I’ve shot a lot of diving action but only a few portraits, so I asked a few of my diving friends if they had any suggestions. I knew I would have the luxury of being able to climb to the top of the diving tower, so this was the best idea we could come up with. Since I’ve only been in the OSU aquatics facility a few times, and never for diving, my biggest concern was that I wasn’t going to have a clean background below the diving board. As you can see, it turned out perfect.
Chelsea is on the 3-meter board, and I climbed up to the top of the 10-meter platform to shoot down with my 70-200mm lens. It took a bit of moving around atop the 10m platform to get the right angle without any overhead lighting glare. I know I lost a bit of the sense of height with the longer lens, but it did a good job of giving me a clean background.
I used two lights for this. The first is shot into an umbrella reflector at the base of the diving board looking at Chelsea. The second light is below the board pointed at the water. Both were at half power triggered by Pocket Wizards.
Climbing up and down all those steps with my gear in a humid pool on a 90-degree day left me awfully sweaty by the time I got back to my car, but I’m happy with the result.
CAPTION:
Worthington Kilbourne graduate Chelsea Davis recently placed 12th at the U.S. Olympic trials on the 3-meter springboard. The Ohio State senior won the event in front of her hometown crowd at the NCAA championships in March.
Tags: chelsea davis, diving, kilbourne, ohio state, portrait, worthington
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Gymnastics is notorious for being one of the most difficult sports to shoot. Not only are the athletes flipping their bodies around quickly, but photographers generally aren’t allowed to use flash to brighten up the gyms. The training gym I shot in this past week was actually darker than most high school gyms, so I took my wide aperture prime lenses and shot at the highest ISO possible for my camera in order to freeze the action. Unfortunately the window you see at the far left of the frame provided no help for bars or beam.
I took a few frames of my subject, in this case it is the girl in the middle doing the back handspring, working out on bars, but it was way too dark to stop the action. I hung around until she moved to beam. I liked that all the girls were spread out practicing on different beams, so I used my 28mm f1.8 lens at 1600 ISO. It was the widest of the fast prime lenses that I have. In case you’re interested, the other lens I used was the 85mm f1.8. Our pool 200mm f1.8 lens is still at Canon. Apparently someone in the accounting department didn’t pay our bill, so CPS is holding our gear hostage, grr. Needless to say, it wasn’t available for use.
This was only a practice, so I didn’t have any restrictions as to where I could stand. I just needed to be in a spot where they couldn’t fall on me. There is still a bit of motion blur, but for newspaper work, it’ll be close enough to work. A considerable amount of Photoshop work went into toning this image. Not only did I use Noise Ninja to get rid of the splotchy grain, but I had to bring up the curves and levels to help with the exposure. Lastly, I converted to B&W to hide the crappy color of the sodium vapor lights. The athletes had a nice oompa loompa hue when it was in color.
CAPTION:
Recent DeSales graduate Nicole Ciminello does a back handspring on the beam while working out with teammates at Buckeye Gymnastics in Westerville on July 3. Ciminello, who finished second in the all-around at this year’s club state meet, will compete for Ohio State in the fall.
Tags: buckeye, desales, gymnastics, ohio state, westerville
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