St. Albans Aerialesque , a set on Flickr.
Last Friday I was invited to do another photoshoot at the St. Albans trapeze group. This time we all made better plans for the session based on lessons learned from our previous sessions. One of the major problems to overcome was the background. The hall where the group practice is very busy in terms of decoration, which makes for a very distracting backdrop in the images of the performers. Rather than try and throw the background out of focus using depth of field, I decided to persevere with using a plain cloth. I set up two strobes bouncing off of white umbrellas. These were set to the same output to provide an even light. This was to simplify the setup. The group perform some rigorous moves that cannot always be held for too long, so I didn’t want to have to mess around changing the lighting too much.
First the group did some acrobalance. First in groups and, then in doubles. The doubles turned out to be more effective than the groups from a photographic point of view, as although very impressive to watch as a performance, as a still image there are a lot of arms, legs and other body parts in a variety of positions to distract the eye. One of the other compromises was the safety mats, however they are a necessary evil.
Next we moved to one of the lower trapezes. This proved to quite effective, although it did involve me running up and down a rather unsteady ladder to try and get the best angles for each move being performed. The backdrop, although nearly three metres wide was still an issue, as the performers often extended beyond the width of it. This I decided could be cleared up in post processing, but more of that later.
For the next hour or so I shot the group on a variety of lower equipment, including a cloud string, and stirrups. These provided some interesting, and eye watering positions.
Finally we moved to the high trapeze. The support stands for the backdrop we never going to be high enough so James, my step son, bravely volunteered to go up the rickety ladder to suspend the cloth from the metal supports in the ceiling of the room. The stands for the backdrop did come in very handy though as they convert quite easily into light stands enabling me to get a strobe higher up than with my standard gear. I set up two strobes to one side, covering the high and lower part of the performance area, and a strobe on the other side to cover the middle area. Sadly the with of the backdrop proved to be fairly inadequate for these shots.
After three hours of shooting the team were getting pretty tired, and no wonder. I could not even attempt some of their simpler moves, let alone the complicated routines they do. We decided to call it a day and pack up.
Processing the images has been fun, but I felt a weight of responsibility. The group had allowed me to intrude on their time so I wanted to try and get some usable images for them. This has involved lots of extending backgrounds, extensive use of the healing tool, and multilayer's. I lightened the background to try and eliminate creases in the cloth and the joins where the fake background starts.
It was a very enjoyable session, and I an very grateful to the group for letting me once again take over their session.
