Recently I had the chance to continue working with Redbull on our photography project where I photograph athletes using the sun as a ball from their Sport.
Phil and Lauren took time out from their busy Fort Lauderdale Major Series preparations to embrace an energy of a different kind. On this very special occasion there was no ball and no opponent. Just the sun, the sand and the artistic direction.
One major difference from this shoot and the “Dunk the sun” shoot with NBA player Anthony Davis was the amount of lighting we used for the shoot.
In the Anthony Davis shoot I used multiple Scoro S packs and Move 1200L packs as well as 8 heads to light the scene and over power the sun. But that wasn’t an option this time because I had to travel to Florida for the shoot and work with no external power supply so instead of going with generators I decided to use the (travel friendly) portable battery powered Siros L lights and a Move 1200L pack with HS.
Besides the obvious benefits of not having to draw power from a generator, these lights also come with an amazing high speed sync feature called “HS.” When using this mode you can then shoot with your shutter speed all the way up to your cameras limit, well above the normal 1/250th of a second most DSLRs can sync with lights at.
In my case, I shot a majority of the shots ranging from 1/2500 to 1/8000th of a second in order to darken the sky and make the sun the size of a volleyball. I also used a variable ND filter so I can dictate what aperture I wanted to shoot at to let in more or less of a starburst effect the smaller apertures have on lights.
We shot for three days straight. The first day we arrived on the beach a few hours before the sun came up at 7am to set up lights and do test shots in order to dial everything in for when one of the athletes arrived over the next two days.
The problem was, the clouds were very thick and didn’t burn off until later in the day and at that point the sun was too high in the sky for our shots.
The second and third days of shooting where very similar. We would get there early before sunrise to set up and see clouds in the sky. But we got lucky and the clouds were dispersing much faster than the first day, however we would only get small windows to shoot in when clouds were not covering the sun so we had to work very quickly with both athletes.
I used 2 broncolor Siros L lights and 1 broncolor Move 1200L pack and MobiLED head with a P45 reflector on each Siros and a Focus umbrella on the MobiLED head banked together. This was my setup for a majority of the shots and then on the wider ones we would light the net separately so it would stand out more.
After all the light was in place it would be a sorta dance between myself and the athlete to find the perfect positioning to make the sun feel as though they are using it as a ball.
About Dustin Snipes
Photographer Dustin Snipes is a Los Angeles, California based portrait and sports photographer. Dustin works frequently with major national and international publications and brands including Coke-Cola, Wilson Tennis, Marriott, Spyder, Nike, Reebok, Gatorade, Red Bull, KFC, ESPN The Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Men’s Fitness, Shape, Sports Illustrated, Time, and numerous others.
