For the last 5 years I have had the pleasure of handling the photo coverage for the Chafe 150 bicycle race that starts and ends in Sandpoint, Idaho. The Chafe 150 is is put on annually by the Sandpoint Rotary Club in an effort to raise funds for the Lake Pend Orielle School District. Specifically the funds are used to help the school district staff better meet the needs of students on the autism spectrum. This is a truly worthy cause and one that I am very glad I can donate my time and efforts to, for more information about the Chafe 150 check out their website at: http://chafe150.org/.
In years past I have not only taken still images for the event but also captured some video clips along the way. This year the event coordinators added a full video team to the roster so I decided to take my video coverage a different direction than I have previously. This year, rather than focusing all of our video coverage on the riders, I decided to capture a behind the scenes look at what we do during the day as we provide the organization and the riders with great photos.
I use a variety of different techniques during the day, here are some examples of three of my favorites. Around the 1:45 mark you will see my wide angle remote camera triggered by pocket wizards on my two hand held cameras, this allows me to get two different perspectives at the same time.
At the 3:18 mark you will see me using a technique called “panning”, this is a tricky technique to use but when done properly it really give the viewer a sense of motion and speed. It requires the use of a slow shutter speed, timing your movement with the rider and taking a lot of frames very fast. The idea is to get key features of the rider like the face and hands to be sharp but for everything else to have motion blur, it can create some very dramatic images that really give you the feeling of the motion of the sport.
When you get to the 4:30 mark you will see us setting up a couple of strobes to capture some more dramatic looks than what we would be able to do with only the available light. My Paul C. Buff Einsteins are not designed to allow me a shutter speed of more than 1/250 of a second which is much too slow to capture action, but with the use of a Pocket Wizard TT5 I can use the HyperSync function to force my strobes to allow me to shoot at 1/800 of a second. Using this technique I am able to underexpose the sky and get a much more dramatic looking image than I could without the addition of the lights.
While using the strobes I also shot with available light using a zoom lens and then switched to the camera with the wide angle lens for the strobed look, here is a comparison of the variety of looks I was able to get this way.
Now on to the video, you can watch the imbedded video below or you can visit my YouTube page at: jasonduchowphoto
For the complete photo galleries all of the Chafe 150 rides I have covered you can visit my website at this link: http://bit.ly/1GJvtZe
Jason Duchow Photography is located in Oldtown, Idaho and does on location portraiture throughout Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Jason specializes in environmental portrait photography often with the use of dramatic lighting techniques and is also known for his freelance sports photography work for www.idahosports.com, The Coeur d’Alene Press, The Bonner County Daily Bee, Priest River Times, Newport Miner, Living Local and a handful of other newspapers and publications.
