St. Albans Trapeze

I was recently invited to photograph the trapeze/acrobalance group that my wife belongs to.  I have done this before, which I have previously blogged.  I have deliberately not read my previous posts, as I would like to see if I write similarly about the experience, and if I actually learnt anything from the previous time.

The group is now run by a different leader, Kate who welcomed me to the first session of the evening.  The premise initially was to get shots for their website to help promote, and then to get shots for people to use for prints, social network profiles, that sort of thing.  Now regular followers of this blog will know I am not a professional photographer, however I do take like to achieve results I can take pride in, whilst giving those who are kind enough to pose a set of images that make them smile. 

I unpacked my eclectic array of gear, and set about getting some shots of the class in progress.  We decided to try and get some shots of trapeze moves that started at the basics.    I could not dream of doing even the moves that they assure me were the simplest to achieve.  My setup was my trusty Canon 60d and 17-55mm (ish) f2.8 combo with a 480ex flash on camera.  I try using a lastolite eazybox, but neither me nor my camera really gets the exposure right doing this dynamic sort of shooting.  As a consequence these shots had massive shadows, and were a little harsh in places.  More practice needed I think.  We shot for about an hour, before the members of the second session began to arrive.  This session was to be more structured so as to be able to improve and control the lighting.

I set up a background behind a low trapeze.  This was the single biggest mistake of the evening, and I regret doing it.  The cloth was far too small for the performer to keep within, and so I have ended up with numerous shots of people bisected by the backdrop.  Some I have been able to salvage in Photoshop, but this is time consuming, and to my self critical eye not the most appealing way to present the work of the performers.  If I get the opportunity in future I will not use a drop at all, and keep the environment as the background, despite it's busyness.

Having said that we did have a lot of fun as people had brought stuff to dress up in.  This added a dimension to the shoot, and the images which was a lot different to last time.

I had a fantastic time with the group, and we did make some great images together. If I was asked to go back again, I would in a heartbeat.

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St. Albans Aerialesque

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.

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St. Albans Aerial Trapeze Session

St. Albans Aerial Trapeze Session, a set on Flickr.

So this was quite nerve wracking. I had been asked to shoot Jane's trapeze group. When you are asked to do something the expectation of you is ramped up. I didn't want to do just the live shots like I would at a gig, but rather I wanted to have some degree of control over the lighting. With this in mind I packed all my strobe gear into the car along with background stand, backdrops etc, and stumbled into the venue like the worst kind of weekend warrior. I set up some lights, and the backdrop around one of the lower trapezes, and perched, very uncomfortable on a step ladder, started to snap my first volunteer. Luckily it was Jane, so I didn't feel like such a fool asking her to do things. The first problem I encountered is that the backdrop was too far away to be effective, and became just another distraction in the background. The next problem was that to capture the shapes of the routines I had to move around quite a lot, and so lot the advantage the height of the ladder gave me. I got to a point where I was getting the brollies in the pictures which does not look good. Then disaster struck. The electric in the building blew. The fuse boxes were quickly checked, and the owner of the building consulted. It became apparent that the electricity was not coming back on in a hurry. In an effort to make the most of the situation I switched to a couple of portable flashguns, but the results were far from ideal. Next time, we will plan the moves better, and give the trapeze artistes more useful direction.

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