'Snowboarding' in the summer

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):

dude thats awesome, i cant believe you set this up in the park ahaha

Yeah that's ****ign amazing.

Haha yeah, I nearly crapped my pants when I first saw the drop in ramp on Saturday. It's actually kind of scary dropping in since the ramp is at 45 degrees and you're about 6 feet up.

So ideas I've gotten so far from other forums:

1) Grab a ladder and shoot with a telephoto when shooting boardslides. They actually might look good from a higher angle.

2) For presses I should shoot from the an angle that is the same level or below the rider

3) Shoot with a fisheye and try high and low angles diagonally across the box.

4) Maybe use the 2 trunks or fence to frame the shot

5) Shot from really low to high and see if I can frame the rider in the sky

Yea, I would go with tip number 5 you posted above, to make the best of what you have.

Where do you get said material?

pro wrote in post #5727564
Where do you get said material?

A few places. The powderpak my friend ordered online. Company is out of Georgia I think. The topsheet on the box was bought off Ebay (I forget the name of the plastic). Wood...probably at Lowes. My friend is set designer (for fashion shoots and stuff) so he's quite the carpenter.

The next idea we had was the find a warehouse on the cheap then permanently house a few of these setups there.

Sick dude, thanks. I emailed them.

Oh, one more thing, do you know how many sheets he used? (assuming it comes in 8x10 sheets)

So its alittle expensive. $322 per 8x10 sheet.

Not 100% sure. I know he spent about $400-500 for all the powderpak material used on the drop in and also the run off. He also brokered a slight discount. Thing is this stuff isn't perfect. We actually had problems initially getting enough speed to reach the end of the box. Obviously some part of that could be skill but we fixed the issue by putting water/soap on the surface. Then everything worked fine. Alternatively you could:

1) increase the inclination of the drop in (it was at 45 degrees already)
2) shorted the flat section of the drop in (which was about 4-5 feet)
3) shorten the box

If I had to make a choice I would say #2 is the best option. Hope this helps.

Thanks! Do you think you could possibly substitute another material for this? Formica?

We were thinking maybe astroturf since that is cheaper but honestly we've never experimented.

big_apple_ken wrote in post #5726358
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.

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 C&C and suggestions. Thanks!

1/160th of a second is far too slow and you will get a lot of motion blur. Turn this up to somewhere in the vicinity of 1/800th or higher. Shoot in Av or use manual exposure.

J.

JohnJ80 wrote in post #5728543
1/160th of a second is far too slow and you will get a lot of motion blur. Turn this up to somewhere in the vicinity of 1/800th or higher. Shoot in Av or use manual exposure.

J.

Yeah, I'll definitely crank up that shutter speed for the next session. I always shoot manual. Also most likely will have a fisheye to play with then as well (excited!). Hopefully will get some better photos to show you guys next time.

If any of you have lighting suggestings I would really appreciate that since I'm totally a newbie with lighting.

It looks like fun and all but why not just use a skateboard in the summer?

@nt!x wrote in post #5730974
It looks like fun and all but why not just use a skateboard in the summer?

Honestly, I would love to but....2 reasons:

1) I never learned how to skate. Feel kind of like a dork learning how to skate at 28.

2) The best way to practice a sport is to do that sport and not some similar sport.

It was fun.