Wrestling with Strobes

I shot two long days at one of the toughest high school wrestling tournaments on the east coast this past weekend (Mount Mat Madness). I haven't gone through all of my images, but I did go through the championship finals and thought I'd share some of them.

I had two AB800's about 30 feet from the edge of the mat off each corner on on 13' stands. I had them set at 1/2 power and pointed near the back of the mat. I had less than 10 minutes to set up for the finals, so once started I hoped for the best.

I shot with my 70-200 f/2.8L with my Mark-IIN at ISO 200 and f/4.0 for most of these.

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Outstanding shots.

The photos are fantastic! You've just given me some ideas!
Did you just set up the ABs bare?

Yes these were direct. The gymnasium ceiling angled up from the edges of the gym and then had a large cupola in the center, so the ceiling was probably 30', so I gave up trying to bounce.

Awesome. So what kind of light was in the Gym? Did you color balance the strobes?
And how exactly did you have the lights set up? Sorry for so many questions.

Kagemaru wrote in post #2547339
Awesome. So what kind of light was in the Gym? Did you color balance the strobes?
And how exactly did you have the lights set up? Sorry for so many questions.

Ambient was about ISO 1600 f/2.8, pretty typical.

I setup my two 13' light stands back about 30' from the edge of the mat. There were 2 video cameras on tripods and various other officials also in the area, so I wanted to be clear from them. I angled the strobes the best I could in the short time I had to setup to hit the back portion of the mat almost to the center. I figured the farther away they were, is where I wanted to concentrate most of the light.

I sat in the right corner of the mat to shoot. Set my camera's WB to daylight, ISO 200 f/4.0 and my histogram looked pretty good, so I went with that.

These images are pretty much out of camera except for cropping, resizing and sharpening.

Overall I'm pretty pleased. I would have preferred to bounce off the ceiling, but it wasn't the best venue for bouncing. I suppose I could have tried shoot-thru umbrellas. Maybe next time.

Cool, thanks for the info. You've just given me some really good ideas for shooting some jiu jitsu matches!

great series, eye catching poses.