1/1,000th, f/3.2, ISO 500, careful timing and a talented subject

It was a tricky shot, this.

The actual click was as straightforward as any of them: pre-focussed, get the timing right and bob's yer wotsit.

The setup: a little less so. Good BTS photography is a combination of reasonable photographic chops, taking your chances where you find them, and Kissinger-like negotiating skills. In this case, our talent – marvellous Dutch Olympian Eythora Thorsdottir – was on her lunch break. The assistant director knew I’d been briefed to shoot a few hero stills and wondered if we could squeeze them in between the last setup and Eythora’s lunch.

1/1,000th, f/2.8, ISO 1250 and trying not to trip over anything expensive

Right. Christ. Yep.

I threw a pair of Profoto B10 flashes and their softboxes together in what was possibly record time and got them dialled in as best I could, using Eythora herself to get them as sorted as possible. That gorgeous light streaming in through the windows was courtesy of the film crew – it was beautiful but it was stronger than Popeye in a spinach factory, so that plus a 1/1,000th shutter speed, f/3.2 and an ISO of 500 to try and keep noise under control meant the lights had to earn their crust to provide a reasonable looking keylight.

1/400th, f/10, ISO 200 and the sense that my puny flashes have their work cut out for them

One particularly handy great thing about the B10’s lights, apart from their ability to keep up with 1/1,000th, super short recycle times and small size, is that you control them wirelessly from a Star Trek-looking prop on top of the camera, which means getting one brighter and one darker (or whatever) lets you get your lights right without everyone hanging around while you saunter about the set, forgetting where your mark was. They’ll actually keep up with shutter speeds up to 1/8,000th, so I actually had about eight stops’ more latitude than I needed. I love a bit of headroom.

An outtake from rehearsals. 1/1,600th, f/2.8, ISO 800, no flash.

Eythora was amazing – I’m not about to start describing myself as a dance photographer (not enough room on my business card after “dogsbody”) but having shot a few professional dancers by far their most useful asset is their ability to do the same thing again and again the *exact* same way, which makes life unbelievably easy. Easier, anyway. In particular, given that the room was very gloomy without the flashes, I didn’t want to be trying to focus mid-jump, so we set a mark and prefocussed, which meant Eythora had to hit pretty much exactly the same spot every time to stay sharp. She did, so as much as I’d like to puff out my chest and take all the credit (obviously I did this to the client, I’m not an idiot), this picture would really be nothing without her.

I wouldn’t say I was totally confident in the shots I’d taken in the moment, which happens sometimes. Sometimes you shoot something, you have a quick look on the back of the camera, and you’re like, yep, gotcha. This shoot: less so. When your only light is from flashes and you know you’ve got a VERY short time with your subject, checking your work in anything more than the most cursory way is really hard. I actually checked the time on these shots and the time elapsed between my first shot of Eythora and the last one was a paltry TEN MINUTES, which isn’t long and felt like less. Everything stayed together, thankfully, and the result looks pretty tidy to my eye. Plan like crazy and shoot as much as you can. That way even your tricky shots might come off.

This is the film that got made, btw. Thanks to Paul and Leigh for the nod.

10 minutes' work

Storm chasing 2018