Lessons

Lesson Info

Joel Grimes: Shoot: Athlete in Motion

now this is gonna be a knockout situation mean I'm gonna put him not knock him out but I'm going to cut him out eventually and drop it in the background and so all I want is enough yeah come on over here all I want is enough information in his legs and everything that I conduct him out so you're going to see my life you know whatever and so is this I don't have a huge sweep you know we probably could johnny think about this we could probably just use the brick wall yeah it's not perfect but you need enough so you can cut somebody out and this sweeps nine foot you can also purchase by the way if you get in a situation you go cash I wish I had a little more you could buy a twelve foot quite sweet a little heavier if you have if you drive a little teeny uh you know um smart car probably not a good thing to put on the top your roof but for most cars you can put on iraq and get home you know get into space and so a twelve foot seem this is a good thing to put for people jumping so um but I ...

want to be able to get him in there and look he's already sweating oh that's because of the glittering you weren't nervous were you when you heard me not not about you're like whoa whoa whoa you did bring your gloves right okay um so we're into an action shot and I'm going to show you kind of how that's done now any questions at this point from our folks in cyberspace on all this action tee time you know I think the big one that we had wass let's see then decide whether which ones to ask here we've got what do you think we could go with from chris walt I think so yes so chris walt says the camera is set at a speed below the sink like one two hundred even though the speed of the aperture is one six thousand yes so the ambient must be so low that nothing is recorded at one two hundred is that right there you go we're in a dark environment right and so this is the question you say what my shutters going at one two hundred of a second it doesn't have to match my tee time no because the stroke is going and a really short duration within that one two hundredth of a second so that's so he'll think about this way the speed of light is does he know it's fast okay um and so when we talk about a one six thousands of a second we think that's really fast is not with light so that's where you get this ability for number one a sensor to pick up like tl is going about making a computer saying perfect cut off t time boom and you get a perfect closure and that's because the speed of light is faster than what you know our brain can think so yes in an environment of justify machine outdoors it's a whole nother thing okay so you can you can you can still using a fast sink time but you're going to be limited there might be some issues there I don't hardly ever shoot outdoors with high speed sinking unless it's dark like the last light I might do it boom get a guy on a track and field but all my stuff now is the stuff that your scene is all shot in studio and there goes back to I'm going to show you guys later selling the fake dropping someone in that's a whole another you know skill set but so I don't worry about the outdoors ambient influencing I'm in a studio and I'm freezing the action and with the height might my sikh set at one two hundred second that's a good question no great and maybe one more just from diem photography just to clarify so can you actually freeze action with full power or is there just no way to that not with these packs now with pro photo they have spent lots of it probably have gold coils and sensors in their packs and they do things that are allowing you to get a lot of power out and getting a short duration I don't know how it all works I've never really used that um but I went to rent three packs three heads at sammy's camera and they said bring thirty thousand dollars cash to pick it up or you know you have to have a credit card that has thirty thousand dollars on it to rent it out the door so that's the problem with profile is very expensive it works amazingly but doesn't really fit most of our budgets not so I hear you're gonna have to run the power down to get that one six thousands of a second and here's the beauty of it it tells you on the back of here what's your tee time is so I just powered up until I get my pt time what I want then match it with my eyes so and my f stop it's really simple so it goes back to this make a simple is possible folks don't get too wrapped up into it and there's also some considerations which people need to know is that the triggers do you buy a trigger on ebay that's made somewhere in another country that may not have a specimen I don't know what you call it triggered whatever to match your tee time I don't know so what I normally do just to be safe when I'm doing my fast action stuff I used the policy buff triggers even though I have some pocket wizards and some some radio poppers we're amazing and probably the radio poppers are going to be fine it's just that as a safety I know that these work because they come with the unit that makes sense so I know that my trigger is gonna match my tee time on my fastest see part so that's another question I get a lot yeah that was one of the other questions is going let's go back to this I'm I don't know everything about all of this and I'm telling you right now there's people that are watching right now that probably could walk circles around me when it comes to explaining this I do know that I needed one six thousand of a second to freeze action so that's what I'm gonna do so you think we're ready to go teo let's do let's do it right just jumping the first thing I gotta do is I'm going to set my camera I'm gonna change my settings too s o four hundred okay I'm going to set my f stop to unlock it here to five point six this is because I've done this right and then my shutter speed I'll leave it up to hundred because I know that two hundred the second this is gonna work fine right and at those settings I should be able to I'm going to come over here and I'm gonna run this down so let's just I don't know if I can move that I was gonna show you the back of this thing but I want to move this down tell it says let's go back okay so I'm gonna go onto one one six thousands is one eighth power I thought of one four fourth but one eighth power so I'm gonna leave that at one eight and I'm going over here and do this one at one eight power so they're both matching so let's run this down to one power it says on the back of their tea time one six thousands of a second sore now pretty darn close to getting ready to do a shot so let's get you in here do we have that basketball alright so actually before you get the basketball let's do a test now remember what I said is that when I haven't athlete even though he's a thoroughbred there's only so many jumps in fact I photographed thoroughbreds cows don't run very well do they but there was fifty horses was running across this branch I had five ranch hands getting the horses to go right and I'm like all set up for a brochure I'm shooting you know these horses run across the field most amazing just the sound of the house they got two runs and no matter how hard they want to push him they they didn't want to run more than twice so I had to shot two attempts to get those horses perfectly lined up in my shot and so the same thing with athletes you only get so many clicks they're worn out there sweating they're tired and so you gotta be kind of like play it really you know quickly you can't fiddle too much so let's raise this light up a little bit john because he's going to jump up so here's what I want you to dio see that one shot over there on that wall this kind of do a jump like that and we're going to the ball with you first just test it or maybe if you want do you feel comfortable doing the ball right away teacher all right so let's try it okay and normally these guys dribbled in jump but we can't dribble member because the sound like freak out the sound people so whatever is easiest to kind of this is hard because I don't know if I could jump put a ball you know between my legs I don't know so I mean I'd probably you know like throw my back out or something but basically lets just get a quick little reference of you know do you jumping and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna lower this and so by lauren my camera what it does is it makes him look like he's flying a lot higher so remember this you don't have to go that high okay that that's not the goal is not to see if you can get to hit the rafters so what was my rule of thumb lower the camera lower the light okay so we're gonna lower this down and I'm gonna see how far I can get it before before okay so I'm at twenty four millimeter and two hundred the second is a four hundred and I have not tested this before right I mean in terms of in this environment whatever and so we'll see here how close I am and I think position wise you're pretty good I mean I had to move the lights back we pulled those sweep away from the wall just a little bit because I want those lights is far back we may have to go and just a little bit all right so uh give me a little bit of a jump there and I'll see what I can do if I catch you ready you try it okay so I'm going to come up here first thing I noticed is I missed his one foot okay so he's one foot out of the picture and um does it come up on this one yet but come up injustice and then this is too much power this was too much power so let's go and not this down we're gonna go down at least a full she's way to let the front right way to let so let's go I'm gonna go full stop that's a full stop okay let's try it again now let's do this let's have you when you jump you do a little bit of an angle I want to see a little bit more of your face okay so you're jumping this way okay so now timing timing is everything so I'm gonna back up just a little bit because I noticed that even if I'm really good here I'm still going to miss him a little bit so let's see if I can get you right hold on I'm going to raise this or pull it back mr fraction to get clear of that here we go I'm ready yeah beautiful now I gotta look too dark on this and so we'll see what we see what we're getting okay now what to dark on here and because it's a wide angle lens what happens anything closer gets bigger right now if you look at my shot over there with one of the ball up people he's jumping looking front foot's a little bigger in the back foot so it's not a bad thing right because it fits in the wide angle environment so I'm not a little worried too much about that but also let's do this so when you jump start about here that way you're a little bit back this one's not even hitting you so that was a problem this one's kind of going past you also so let's adjust that so these were little adjustments here okay so let's see what happens we're on our third jump okay so let me get focused okay I'm ready to go okay so let's see also sometimes it helps not to look actually through the viewfinder just just if you got him all framed up and you can you can you know by just your eye clicking and you can actually see the light hit the person so you know if you're correct okay so now I can you play basketball right you got to get that but this guy over here does it for a living the guy on the wall over here special effects to call him so you know it's like I said it's not just your not dribbling either so he dribbled jump boom so it's a little harder so okay so the first thing I'd do is remember what for not too bad you know we're getting there okay so I would say again I think it's free you seeing ghosting in there none this frozen okay so now I'm gonna go look at my lighting so let's say well um he's lit on the back pretty good here that's got a good line um maybe a little over lit on the front here on his chest but his face is got a little bit of highlight so what I could probably do is have him let's see maybe when you when you do it just turn and look down a little bit so you just jump and you're not looking too far that way but look bring your head a little bit this way now you can't give a guy too many things to do a person who can't remember what he supposed todo right so just comfortably do it again but maybe now watch your face because this important right cause I'm I'm still a portrait shooter I still want to look how the light looks and if I'm like for example the golfer right if he looks like he's a hack for an ad you know for a golfing brochure not good stay with basketball you want to make it look like he's really the real deal so I wanna make sure I get a good good jump out of him all right so let's try it again here we go I wanna focus on you all right here we go okay now that was a little short that back leg didn't quite get high enough but don't worry about it nor about do it again I know it's a little bit uncomfortable so just try it again already that's getting better it's getting better so hopefully that back legs a little bit better here there's not bad now at this point we could do another ten shots maybe get a better one but maybe there's something more comfortable that you're able to dio you're saying you like well that kind of uncomfortable you know maybe I could try something like you're like doing a slam dunk or whatever I'm saying so I've discovered that like when I did there was eleven athletes basketball players for this one team that a photograph for that for that shoot someone just I didn't do very good at that they did better at something else so it could be that we find something that fits you like what can you do that you think it looks pretty dramatic that could be kind of cool right so what do you think what could we do do you want to do it okay so that's gonna be that's well there you go um let's see what we do well see that's why this is pretty easy you feel comfortable trying one okay let's try it just try another one really quick joel just give philip chance to breathe again a little bit question for when you doing these action shots how are you focusing like what's your are you pre focusing what's yeah but I back focus and I could get into that a little bit but I hated auto focus from day one and it wasn't till about two years ago that I actually even used auto focus that all when I discovered back focus which is means I've disconnected this focus or it doesn't focus by the little trigger finger it focuses by the thumb so the beautiful thing of that is is let's say I got you and I want I want to set you to the the right of the frame right so if I have my little sensor in the middle and I go this way you're perfect right in focus but if I go over here like this I got either hit the button set it up so freezes it then moving on to shoot it well then that's that's got there's two things going on right but if you back focus all you do is focus and then just turned start shooting as soon as you move back I refocus so right now I'm doing is I'm focusing on him knowing he's jumping straight up and down I don't have to change my focus that much I'm pre focusing love it sounds great it's there may be a better way but again this is how I do it all right so here we go again so think about it um maybe have your head down just a little bit and give me a little bit of uh uh come on man you little bit of okay I just back focused here we go that's pretty good that looks pretty good wait here we go here come on yeah that's better now um I would say that probably we could lower that light a little bit no just height wise because it's not lighting I mean we got plenty of height there laureate like that was actually not bad but look look at the fact that we still got that edgy lighting feel right and I'm still doing zone one zone too so I really haven't changed my lights all that much from the portrait so this line works on a lot of different levels now if you wanted to like I just shot on monday a snowboarder jumping through the air right in the studio I'm going out in the field now shooting the actual backgrounds and as a conscious decision I decided to and with the art director is to have the light coming here be really bold and the light back here really weak because I'm gonna have the sun coming from this direction I still want a little edge light but I'm actually feathering it down a little bit so it's not equally edged right there not two sources of son so I think about that but for this scenario I'd only care because even like in that shot there I got two lights coming equal and most of my sports stuff is pretty much equal but so that actually is not bad ok but still you look too happy and he looked too you need a little tall man you know come on okay so we're all set focused ready to go it's looking pretty good I can't see the face there yet but now we're getting we're getting the time he looks pretty good yeah now he's looking like he's you know going to take the world by storm that's actually not too bad right that's not too bad um so you see my timing no I'm actually getting perfect right now how is that possible it's just that I've now know just enough boot to catch it so it is a little bit of timing but now what are we on about eight jumps so we're still under a ten so that's kind of how this works you're not gonna get four hundred pictures of some guy jumping so let's do one more and then maybe just work on that expression a little bit and I'm gonna watch you here we go okay okay I was probably a little early or that lack back leg was a little low coming up I wish you could I wish you could dribble it we put it through your like let's try this what what else can we do uh oh you know what to do I got it okay let's do this I did this we can't we can't dribble but it's not on my it's I wanted it's like well this thing's not really if he's turning right he's just got a turn like you're in your dribbling but the ball was sort of in the air so let's try actually it's like this so let's try maybe instead of jumping through the air let's try a riel whip around shot and again you're moving a pre hire a speed what's that don't jump so let's let me zoom in here a little bit like this so get actually move that direction a little bit don't let go of the ball and hit our he's gonna spend that way let's see if I can if I can catch this ready go for it whoa okay so start over here a little bit and maybe let's sit come up here you got it went out of the frame okay so let's try here it may be actually face further that direction and then whip around ready my focus so there's a way you don't have some jumping but you could get someone that's really moving and again if we could if we could dribble you might just you know he turned I think we did this we actually had the guy throwing the ball to my assistant or someone right but you get that motion like someone's dribbling and we also did where you dribble and actually have someone like they're leaning and turning into something so we just time that they came through and boom and it looks like when we dropped him in they were actually moving through the uh court so instead of having a position like you're kind of going through court they're actually moving through the court but see how fast he moved us frozen and again I'm at one hundred four hundred which is pretty safe it's not too it's not gonna be that grainy and then I'm got five six of uh f stop still got playing depth of field and I'm pretty much covered because I'm what angle and so um these were working beautifully maybe something else maybe just do this you know just try something we'll just again got some suggestions from folks online we'd love to see maybe spending on spinning the ball on the finger I don't know if you can do that you do that okay what sorry I was late all I need is I all I need is one second one just put it watch this next one here but don't cover your head so it's like the ball the washington shot he's spinning you know maybe it's a cool shot I don't know it could be my portfolio shot of the day right yeah okay so try it off the side a little bit now I got it I got out of the frame so let me let me go a little higher here ready to try it so all fun stuff I mean um but the building to freeze action gives you lots of options where you know before I wouldn't have that I'll have this ghosting now on the spinning a ghost you might look good but do just do like you're like you're like intensely going this way too that way and let me just see if we catch you were ready whatever you want okay so maybe start there and then spent two or mia oh sorry that was that was really bad sorry that was okay I'm fired here we go no pun intended I see what this looks like like that look of his muscles and everything okay so yeah maybe he's grip that ball's times you can't go let's just see what look we get here you ready for a way to get some cool stuff if you uh just keep playing joel can I ask you a question yeah there was a comment a mere slap and asked have the guy shout or scream or yell I while jumping from our facial attitude on and I'm just wondering yeah do you have a style or a brand when it comes to the facial expressions during these types of shoots or do you mix it up I don't know about a brand but I mean yelling helps yelling helps yeah you know let's not blow out the microphones but yet you bet I get a lot of times you get that intensity to sort of come out and so we could do that that's not too bad but you know that's again he's moving at a really high rate of speed their um and so that's not doesn't really give us the action stop like I've done his other but um let's well let me think about this anything else do you think you could do jumping wise that might all right let's try that but I'm gonna make sure that I can get you I could get you in there because we're gonna have umm um all right again I don't want you to hurt yourself because that would be bad news I said just do a little jump and then bring the ball up like you're slamming it yeah a little bit well see here's the problem here is a problem he is really reaching the rafters no no no no so now I gotta get way down here and I'm gonna try it this way I'm gonna take my take my camera turning I'm off the tripod beautiful eyes I missed your hand though so you gotta step back a little bit then do it okay so I'm gonna end up flipping it um so he looks like he's you know way up there all right try it again here I'm gonna catch you yeah okay now I missed his foot on this side so I was kind of anticipating so do this can you just jump straight up here we go ready again can I whistle early so I've done this volleyball players to where it's really awkward until you get that right shot so maybe do like a little hang time you know like you're like you're in that you know the michael jordan hang time try that okay just just jumping that give me a little like the arms back like you're ready to slam it just try it there you go now I missed his hand see how hard this is it's like it's like well and he's not really be able to dribble it I think but that's not bad but now watching to see your legs you spread your legs more come on do the michael look michael look okay now I'm gonna see if I could get you all in their ready here we go yep there we go I think I nailed it I think I nailed it finally there who just missed a little bit a little bit of the foot but um that's kind of you know I probably could go horizontal on this try one more and see that x I think I could still get you horizontal now so really spread the legs on that cut trip trim the ojai was almost perfect I just trim the ball off but here's the thing I could always take a frame off old one and drop it in ooh now we're getting there come on let's do that again ready yeah nailed nailed it this is killer right there so again you do you know ten of those or fifteen of those and he's exhausted but hopefully you got enoughto teo you know now dropping him in that's a whole another art but I think you get the point right you get the point that it takes a little work a little bit of timing and the tools are not that complicated um so let's go from here any other questions I think in terms of high speed I think I've covered pretty much what I need to cover um wide angle lens helps now I just did this really cool shoot I took a I built a flat with that rolls in my studio in phoenix so it's it's eight by twelve and I had a guy originally that was the basketball scenario and I took the one light all the way back twenty eight feet same settings here so I had five six at the power whatever I'm doing there so it's a six thousand shutter speed and he goes and he launches of self angles like that and he's against the white and the shadows hitting the wall I wish I had it for you here to show you unbelievable totally different look now again but I'm using high speed sinks same concept but with one light with a shadow and then I did it with him jumping with the uh uh skateboard like tony hawk look boom he jumped up turned the board like that you know he's catching it and it is the white with a shadow yeah gorgeous and so there's a pin how far away he is from the white will change the length of the shadow and all that so really cool look sobis still with high speed sync knowing that I need a one six thousands of a second at least out of the out of the way the light to freeze action now one little side teo note here if I pull these grids off I get about another stop of light so what that tells me is that if I start to get a little bit worried about my f stop there so let's say five six not covering it my depth of field and I might think you know what I'm gonna pull those grids off put a couple flats up now you get a full more stop of light out of there now I'm using the grids to stop my flair so that gives me a little bit of flexibility and if I really needed the extra power could take my inner baffle out what you're gonna make my life a little harsher because a smaller blasting the center but yet or I use a smaller box and a smaller box usually puts out a lot more like in a big box so if I really need that extra half stop instead of raising my eyes so I just solve it through those little little issues so again think about it now again I've probably have barely tapped the surface of what can be done with high speeds siggy and action strobes and all that if that's your thing take this this simple little techniques here and run with it and just build a whole body of work that's based on action uh sports you can make a real living doing that and so that's the beauty of what I think I hope to inspire people to say you know what I could do that I have an interest in that and again you may say I want to shoot babies you don't want to have babies plan of the year well maybe you could baby doing backflips um you know but the high speed well okay think about this view of the shots of the dog going underwater for a ball you know they trigger it underneath what a great idea right but you could use animals jumping through the air take your cat throw it through the air in a way and you get a perfect you know frozen cat there's a lot of things you could do with high speed so I'm gonna tell you a quick little stories in it and israel speaking in tel aviv did a workshop in a lecture and this guy came up to me um I'm drawing a blank israel but his name my wife will kill me because she keeps in correspondence with him but he came up to me and he said hey you know I'm just getting ready to give my little talk and he said can I show you some of my work and I'm like really have time for this and here's ipad and I said sure and he opens it up and here's the first pick and I said what kind of work do you do he says macro work I'm thinking macro work that's not what I do have the portrait right so that he says I said what kind of micro bugs and thinking oh great boring and the first picture my jaw hit the floor and what he was doing he was stacking focus with close up insects and they looked like pieces of artwork beautiful he took one idea and just built a whole body of work just taken idea shooting cows or whatever horses dogs who's the guy next to granda does maddie takes the dog all around the world beautiful siri's of images by taking one thing doing over and over and over becoming the expert at it and so now when a client calls me and says we need a athlete jumping there I got a pretty much figured out I know my problems I know how to solve them for the most part doesn't mean I know everything but I do know enough to get there so that's the beauty of what we do is that we can in fact um you know solving the problems work it out then take your creative juices and build something it's just that like we were talking about john is that most of us give up after what about a year when we know we try something so and I'm jumping ahead of my beloved program on saturday but guess what most of us when we have an idea like we build a little bit of work and then we give up on going something else right so if you want to rock the world how many want to rock the world right I do it takes you about three years of beating something into the ground and become an expert before you start getting noticed now maybe there's a rock star that doesn't do it in two years the chances of you taking one idea and do it one year is very very very it's not the chances are pretty slim it takes a little bit of time but as human beings we give up before we get that two to three years of building the bodywork just take anyone that you think I love that photographer's work you know what they do while they didn't start a year ago but as human beings we don't stay with something long enough so there's my encouragement to you what separates joel grinds from the masses the photographers that I have the ability to stick with something and do it over and over and over again that's the beauty of what I have so people come to me in fact I've had people interview me say joel grimes a very talented photographer joel grimes talent talent out there that were talent like fifteen times and finally I stop it I say could you could you quit consulting me what my sultan yeah you're you're saying I got here because of talent I don't get there because of talent out there because the hard work taking a simple idea repeated over and over and being into the ground building it into a brand so that's why I encouraged people that if you say I don't feel like the most talented guy and gal on the planet then take talent to get you their hard work and that's my saturday but part of my saturday program we'll talk more about that but just encourage you like even just a simple idea of action you could take and build a unbelievable body of work in fact wait a minute don't don't do that I don't wantto know I'm just kidding I really think that there's some people that have a vision for that and I'm looking you know that that that could be your thing I don't know if it is not but that could be your thing so it's not rocket science so I've barely tapped into it so any questions we got any more questions at this point on the you know internet we do have one from chris walt who wonders when you're shooting these action shots is there a shutter delay issue that you need to worry about at all when you're when you're trying to capture the exact moment no that's the beauty of our state of the art cameras you push the button boom on the point and shoots that used to have the delay right now they're getting better not is bad you know the problem is with manufacturers is that when you increase for example megapixels and bit depth takes more processing power to run these cameras and but kanan and I connolly they've taken consideration that if I'm a sports photographer and I push that button it goes instantly and so you know my camera's currently I have no problems with the shutter delay and any questions in the studio audience you guys doing all right they're learning toll so jason you're gonna dio a syriza cows jumping in the air maybe not jumping in there may be a serious cattle pictures you know but I'll tell you what though even like for example the bull writing andi I have tried to shoot bowl and I did a thing for roper or whatever was we had a bull rider and mills days I didn't have high speed strobes we tried to stroll the bull with him going out of chute oh my gosh it's a lot of work but you could think about that think about that that could be a killer siri's of images of strobe bull riding coming out of the chute with dark in the background behind and then having this just perfectly frozen thing going on so you never know how you can play we did have a couple questions about again about focusing like if an athlete is running toward you and so that that focal plane is moving how do you deal with that pretty focused in that spot so okay so let's say he's in a launch himself here I say focus he steps back jumps bone and he reaches that point of focus it's not a perfect science it's pretty during close eye I don't know I don't feel like I've ever really had an out of focus picture when I'm shooting these people so long as you get that basic thank I'm shooting wide angle so that's a that's a big difference let me let me do I'll just explain one thing to you that often what we think is that we have to come up with a brilliant idea before we can rock the world some speak write a brilliant idea well if you execute a brilliant idea poorly you can have some success if you execute a poor eye if you execute a poor idea brilliantly he could be okay on occasion you could have a brilliant idea executed brilliantly brilliantly and then your rock star but what can we all do what's at our fingertips right now we can execute a poor idea brilliantly nothing do you understand I'm saying meaning that what happens is often we want to wait for that brilliant idea so we sit around waiting for the brilliant idea but if I have a poor idea and I'm executing it I get better and better and better and better and all sudden I'm a master at executing a poor idea then when the brilliant idea comes I'm a rock star you samson but we are human nature we want to wait for the brilliant idea so we sit around doing nothing so don't sit around doing nothing get out there play play play experiment play and then you execute brilliantly and then one day all of a sudden you go what if I did this and then like I said it all comes together so don't sit around waiting for a brilliant idea just get out and learn how to execute brother wei