The Sprinter

I photographed a high school sprinter yesterday. Peach County's Travis Richmond. I needed to get a portrait of him, and wanted to do something with a bit of drama to it. These are in reverse order as to the way they were taken.

The first shot was him in the blocks. I set it up so the sun was over his shoulder. To capture the sun and Travis both with detail, I dropped my ISO down to 100, chose to shoot in Manual, and had an exposure of 1/320 second at F10. The flash was on a stand set just to my left, at eye level with Travis.

For the second two I let him explode from the block, shooting from a low angle. My light stand would not go low enough to get the light where I wanted it, so for the center photo I was hand-holding the flash, aiming it at him as he flew by. I wanted the light to be more directional, so for the top image, the flash was laying on the ground.

All were shot with my 15mm lens. The extreme wide angle was needed to capture the scene, but also wanted that wide angle distortion on his body as he went past.

The top photo is pretty much what I wanted. Love the mix of light and shadow, the look of determination on his face, and the way the sun highlights his muscle tone. Wish I had a bit more sun showing. Oh, well.