Freestyle in the snow

[woodsie]

Some shots I took at one of the kickers on the Kitsteinhorn Glacier in Austria. This is my first attempt at this type of photography.

#1
http://Woodsie.smugmug.com/photos/143225692-O.jpg

#2
http://Woodsie.smugmug.com/photos/143225941-O.jpg

#3
http://Woodsie.smugmug.com/photos/143225969-O.jpg

#4
http://Woodsie.smugmug.com/photos/143226025-O.jpg

#5
http://Woodsie.smugmug.com/photos/143226139-O.jpg

#6
http://Woodsie.smugmug.com/photos/143226203-O.jpg

#7
http://Woodsie.smugmug.com/photos/143226375-O.jpg

#8
http://Woodsie.smugmug.com/photos/143226464-O.jpg

Full gallery at http://woodsie.smugmug.com/gallery/2703100#143225652

[OPD1008]

Nice shots... I think you ought to do a little pp and get those electrical wires removed.

[nickybegood1998]

I like the last one best as the background gives me some point of reference. I like to see what they are jumping off of or jumping over. I like them all though.

Karman

[Big Hands]

# 8 Rocks!

[Mike Harrison]

you need to show what theyre jumping off of and where theyll land. power lines should be removed as well. really cant say i like em a whole lot because theres so much missing from the photos.

[woodsie]

Thanks for the comments guys.

I agree with the need to remove the power lines in PP, but being my first attempt at this type of shot my focus was on my camera handling techniques and getting the framing correct on a moving, flying person. I'll play around with the PP more when I am happier with the raw product. :)

As for the suggestions of including the kicker and landing in the shot, I agree that this is cool for seeing exactly how high and far they are jumping. So I will definitely be playing around with that next time. But I will have to take a wider angle lens up with me to do that. I also want to play around with doing the jump sequence overlayed on the same image. But I also think that there is something cool about zooming in and having the dude just hanging in the air.

I also love #8, but will have to practice more at getting these ones. Kinda tricky getting the exposure right pointing straight into the sun. Also at this angle on this particular kicker the riders had to be getting massive air to get high enough to not get lost in the background. The shots of guys going lower and being framed against the mountain instead of the sky just didn't work. I'll have to find somewhere to stand where I can get a better angle.

Well, I plan to get out there a bit more over the coming week now that I have finished working and have a bit more play time, so hopefully I'll improve the quality and get to experiment with some different angles and see what works and what doesn't.

[vvilko]

what settings were your camera on?

[woodsie]

Manual exposure so that the camera didn't miss the shot thinking about stuff, set so that the shutter was faster that 1/500s for the moving object and the apeture at f/8 or smaller to give good depth of field. I set the exposure to underexpose the sky by 1 stop to give a rich blue colour. This worked well when shooting away from the sun. When shooting into the sun I had to drag a bit more detail out of the shadows in the RAW conversion, but thothing drastic.

Manual focus as well as I couldn't always guaruntee that the focus point was going to be on the rider and didn't want the camera wasting time hunting for focus, hence the small aperture to ensure adequate depth of field to cover the entire length of the jump. Also a good reason to get in close and use a wide angle lense. I was using my lense at around 35mm (56mm equiv) for most of these shots, I'll have to go wider with a tripod when I try sequencing the entire jump together.

Oh, and of course running burst mode so that I would get 4-6 exposures during the jump. It was for this sort of stuff that I forked out the extra cash for the 20D rather than the 350D at the time for the faster burst mode and bigger buffer so I can still shoot RAW for short sequences like this.

[ak_powder_monkey]

you should show takeoffs and landings

[SHULTSIE!!!]

8 is my favorite too... I'm partial to snowboarding though. The cables from the lift kinda kills, but great shots nonetheless!

[Cyrus]

Nice shots, the first shots would look even better if you removed the power lines using the clone and healing tool in photoshop.. :)

Cyrus

[woodsie]

Ok, so I had a couple of attempts at removing the lift cables and it just didn't work. The problem is that the sky is not an even blue, but quite a strong gradation from light to dark. So when I tried using healing brush or clone stamp, if I didn't get the position EXACTLY right then a smear of a different shade of blue would repace the lift cable. As this would usually take me 2 to 5 attempts with each cable it started get a little tedios by the second image.

I also didn't get to far trying to get the mountain operators to move the cables. ;)

Any suggestions?

[Cyrus]

I also didn't get to far trying to get the mountain operators to move the cables. ;)

Any suggestions?

Perhaps some wire cutters?

Cyrus

[dirt lover]

#8 is so good. That would be a good magazine cover shot.

[jacobsen1]

#2 and #3 are the best, but you need some snow in there for reference.
Ben