NIGHT RUNNER - BEHIND THE SCENES
In this nerdy publication I would like to talk about the process of making this image of the runner with the light trails. It’s a tricky photo to do, so I would like to share my experience with you. I suppose it can be interesting for those of you who would like to have a look behind the curtains on how modern photography is done and especially for photographers who are dealing with mixed lights scenarios and have ghosting effect problem.
I had an idea to create a photo of an athlete running in an urban environment at night leaving light trails behind. A few years ago I did a similar image using the 2nd curtain synchronization, but that image was done in the studio. When you are shooting outdoors it is different story. The location that I have chosen for that image was in my mind since early 2017. At that time I could not figure out what to shoot there, but I knew that the atmosphere is appealing to me and one day I will do something there.
In Barcelona there is a lot of talented athletes that are enthusiastic and ready to collaborate. On Instagram I have found Erete Udy - a Nigerian professional athlete and a fitness trainer. Great person, good humor and easy to work with.
On Sunday, a week before the shooting, me and Mark, who assisted me on this shoot, drove around the city at night to check the location that I had in my mind and also to find three more other locations for more images. Having done photos of the spots I could make bold sketches in Photoshop to see what clothes will match the environment. After Udy has confirmed that he has all the selected clothes it was time to organize the shooting.
Now it is time to speak about the technical problem that I was facing. In general working with the mixed light (strobes and continuous light) are, probably, one of the most hardest scenarios for a photographer to master. Especially when you are dealing with fast moving objects. How would you do such image? Most of photographers will say, that you make a long time exposure, illuminate your subject with continuous light for the light trails and freeze the action with the flash synchronized by the second curtain, right? That’s right, if you shoot it in a photo studio. But unfortunately there is a problem. The problem is that when you have so much ambient light around and have a long shutter speed (in my case it was 2 seconds), you will have ghosting effect. It means that your subject will appear transparent on the image. You will be able to see the background lights through the body. I have tried to find an answer on the internet, but in all the tutorials people speak about the technique but not about the problematic of the ghosting effect. There was one discussion that I have found on one forum dated 2012, but no one could find a solution how to solve the problem using only one image. Maybe you have a solution or an easier way to avoid the ghosting effect, please, share it and write your comment below.
Time to shoot! Huge gratitude to my friends Danny, Mark and Oleg who had time for me on Sunday evening and assisted me on that project. Barcelona has many great urban places that can fit a photo shooting. But the problem is that as soon as you take flashes and tripods out the security or police are usually will emerge out of nowhere and stop the fun. It is odd how security defines what is a professional shooting and what is an amateur shooting. Some consider a SLR camera as a professional tool, so it is a professional shooting in their interpretation. But what if I have a mirrorless camera or a smartphone that shoots good quality images?
So knowing how the logic of securities in Barcelona functions, after we got to the location, everything should be prepared and perfectly orchestrated. But as we all know from the experience the first image is always the hardest one to get. Instead of planned 30 minutes on the first location we have spent 60 minutes. We did three images and stitched them together in the post-production.
All the images must be done using a tripod and the remote cord to avoid camera shaking. Our main light was a flash with a CTO filter (an orange gel) to match the color temperature of the environment. The second light was a 150W LED continuous light with color gels.
1)
The first image is an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image merged from three images with the exposure value of 1 stop each (-1, 0, +1). The image is done with a small aperture to have a long depth of field (image is sharp from the closest point to the farthest point).
2)
The second image was done to record the light trails. All the camera settings stay the same. Athlete runs and an assistant follows him, and illuminates the athlete with the continuous LED lamp. Shutter speed - two seconds.
3)
The third image is done to capture the motion. In order the action to be frozen we were needed a minimum shutter speed of 1/500 of a second and the flash. We set the shutter speed even at 1/1000 of a second and used a HSS flash (High Speed Sync). The problem that we had is when we make the shutter speed so fast, we lose a lot of light, so we had to open the aperture as much as we could and we had to increase the ISO. In our situation we had to open the aperture to the maximum of f2.0 and increase the sensitivity of the camera's sensor up to ISO 3200. That changes have brought us some problems in the post-production. With the aperture f2.0 we have lost the long depth of field and with the ISO 3200 we have got a lot of grain that does not fit well into the images we have done before (the HDR image and the light trails image were shot with the ISO 100). There is also a loss of sharpness and color quality. But everything can be solved. Although I have spent two times more time in the post-production than on the location shooting.
In the post-production I have merged all the three images together (the HDR image, the light trails and the frozen action). One good advice when you are shooting a similar project and want to save time in the post-production is to have a good separation of your subject from the background. You can do it with rim light and overhead lights. We would love to have rim light and overhead, but when you are shooting in guerrilla mode you simply don't have that luxury of unpacking all your gear and flashing at night near the road with the heavy traffic and a police station nearby. It will attract too much attention, so we had to keep it as simple as possible.
The last two locations were much easier and smooth to shoot as we knew exactly how to approach the task. In total we have spent one hour on the second and the third locations and even finished the shooting 15 minutes that we have planned. Its a wrap!
BEHIND THE SCENES
Athlete: Erete Udy
Photographer: Yuriy Ogarkov
1st Assistant: Danny Fernandez
2nd Assistant: Mark Shelest
BTS & Helper: Oleg Juragin
© Yuriy Ogarkov
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