In this week’s photo, I was taken in by the excellent lighting- that rim light on his left shoulder is clutch, without it his black shirt would just fade into the night. I really like the scraps of concrete flying out from under his peg. The composition is proper, with lines as visuals cues pointing your attention to the subject. There is a nice range of tones from black to white (it isn’t muddy like a lot of converted B&W images are). Obviously the shot is perfectly timed.
“Decided to go riding at the local skatepark with my friend Jaron Turnbow on my day off and try out some new gear. I had just received new light stands a few days before and after a park session I asked Jaron if he wanted to shoot a few things with my new set up.
We shot a few other tricks before this but as it got darker I started seeing sparks and dust when Jaron would downside chink the hip in his lines. I had an idea to capture the dust and hopefully some sparks when he did it so I had him do it a couple of times.
The first few weren’t exactly what we were hoping for so he started trying to slide them a bit more and we ended up with this shot. Getting the timing right was difficult for the first few tries but after I got that down the shot panned out and I was able to capture a couple of sparks and some dust like I had wanted.
I grayscaled the image in post because I liked the dramatic effect it had on the scene.
As far as equipment and settings go, the photo was shot with a Canon 5D mark III with a 24-70L at 57mm, ISO 640, f/2.8 at 1/200th. Strobes were two Canon 580ex flashes, one camera right at 1/16th power, and one to right and behind the subject at 1/16th +.07 power triggered with Pocket Wizard plus III’s.”
More of Joshua’s work can be seen here.
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