Lost Balloon

Philippe Dame

I got the idea to do this shot late in the day so I’d like to try it again when there’s more light and in a cleaner setting like a park. Keane has effectively lost his balloon which was tied to his wrist. Naturally, it didn’t happen as the string was cut only in post :) .

I didn’t have time to take many exposures (perhaps 10 in all) as the bugs were coming and it was past his bedtime. I used my Cheetahstand QBox 24″ softbox for this. It’s about 6 feet away from him. I shot with my 28mm lens (I was lying on the ground to get it this wide). I had to move around to get the remote flash to fire as it needs line-of-slight… otherwise I would have composed it a bit better.

The main shot was has some motion blur as it was 1 sec. @ f/1.8 @ ISO 400. A different take below was 1/20th sec. @ f/2.5 @ ISO 1600. Which one do you prefer?

Theme:

Posted on Sunday, July 31st, 2011 at 12:01 am.
  • Yas

    Love them both! Is that a shadow behind him in the first one?
     

    • http://LearningDSLR.com Philippe Dame

      Thanks. It’s a motion blur but he’s not lit as the flash speed is very fast (eg 1000/sec) while the shutter was open a full second. It would have been better if I caught him moving up, then the “shadow” on the hand would have been below not above.

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  • Vinh

    Great post Phil. 

    Always the first to post for our group I’m sure adds undue extra pressure to say the least :-) .   I like the concept overall and the green theme going on and personally prefer the first one better for composition with Keane’s arm outreached.  The only thing that threw me off a bit was the mid air shadows, I originally thought he was standing in front of painted wall.  Looking forward to your retake on this to see how it turns out. 

    Question – 1 sec exposure seems long for this type of action shot, was the intent to capture some motion blur? 

    • http://LearningDSLR.com Philippe Dame

      The 1 second exposure was a happy accident. I was shooting on Manual and then flipped over to Aperture Priority. It metered for the background (never takes into account your flash) and then took a full second. I flipped back to Manual for the rest. In the end, this shot had many elements I liked.