by Michael Clark

On a recent assignment I was reminded that no matter how I might like to describe my job—”I create stellar images no matter what the circumstances” sounds pretty good—the most realistic appraisal is probably “I solve problems on the fly.” On this shoot the weather just didn’t cooperate, so I needed a quick revision of the game plan and the shooting schedule—and a little luck to make it all work.

I was set to shoot with world-class paraglider Honza Rejmanek in and around Salt Lake City as he prepared for the 2011 Red Bull X-Alps competition, which took place last July in Europe. In the competition paragliders race non-stop through the highest part of the Alps to the Mediterranean, covering over 500 miles on foot and in the air. 

We arrived in Salt Lake City the day before the shoot was to start. Honza was primed and ready, but the weather forecast was less than appealing: heavy rain was forecast for both days of the assignment. Paragliders can’t fly in the rain, so things were a bit tense, but with some quick thinking, the right gear and a little luck we got what he needed. Here’s how it went. 

Portrait. It rained non-stop the first day, but I needed some high-end portraits so I spent the better part of the day shooting with battery-powered Elinchrom Ranger strobes in a warehouse that served as a makeshift studio. For the portrait you see here I set up a white background and lit Honza with three strobes, one directly in front of him and two lighting the background. To create a nice soft light, the strobe that lit Honza, which was placed directly behind me and above my head, had a six-foot octagonal softbox on it. The two background strobes were positioned on either side of the background, which was eight feet behind Honza. I chose an aperture of f/6.3 so that Honza’s entire face would be in focus. I composed the image as a horizontal, then cropped it square in the final processing.

Motion Blur. The next day we set out at 5 a.m. to shoot just before sunrise to create an image in which the Elinchrom strobe would freeze Honza’s motion as he streaked across a blurred background. I made the picture from the top of the ridge from which he took off with the strobe set up about 60 feet from where he’d fly by. In manual mode I metered for the background and selected a shutter speed of 1/20 second to create the blur. I took some test shots and checked the histograms and the images on the LCD. Because I was shooting with flash, I’d get only one shot for each pass Honza made, so I set the camera for single frame release and chose the 51-point Dynamic AF mode with 3D tracking. These AF settings allowed me to concentrate on the composition. Frankly, we weren’t sure it would be possible to get the shot, but with a bit of experimentation and the cooperation of a world-class paraglider willing to brave strong winds, we did it. As far as I know this is the first strobe-lit action paragliding image ever made. 

Hiking. To tell the whole story of the competition we needed to get some images of Honza walking with his wing, as half the race involves hiking to the next takeoff point. Technically this isn’t a difficult image to create, but I had to be very careful where I positioned the autofocus point. To get the low-angle perspective I laid down on the road, and I picked a focus point in the upper left hand corner of the frame and placed that point on his face to create the composition. The release mode was set to Continuous Servo High so I could rip off a bunch of frames as he walked toward me, and I chose the Dynamic AF mode to track his movement. 

Floating. Later that afternoon the weather cleared and I was able to get images of Honza hovering above the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains. Honza was able to fly by my position on a steep hillside in a very predictable pattern, which allowed me to communicate with him each time he passed by and tell him where to go so that I could get the shot. I set the camera’s AF to Continuous Servo to track his movement. I chose Auto Area AF because I knew he would be the closest object in the frame, and in this mode all 51 AF points act as one giant AF area. Choosing this option allowed me to concentrate on the composition instead of trying to keep an autofocus point on Honza. Because he was moving so fast, it was difficult to keep him in the frame, so I set the release mode to Continuous High Speed to shoot quick bursts. And because he was moving in and out of the sun, I set aperture priority to deal with the exposure. We shot for 20 minutes, and I ripped off over 400 images. This would have been a very difficult shot without all the automation built into the camera, automation that allowed me to concentrate fully on the image. 

That’s it for this workshop session. Catch you next time around.

Check out Michael’s work and his latest book, Digital Masters: Adventure Photography, at his website, www.michaelclarkphoto.com. For more photo tips, you can sign up to receive his PDF-format quarterly newsletter.