Speedlite Snoot

Was at the Focus on Imaging Exhibition today. It was my 3rd time at the event and for once I managed to not cripple my credit card balance!

One thing I did buy, however, was a Speedlite Snoot from Viewfinder Photographer. I have mentioned Viewfinder's new range of Speedlite accessories in a previous blog. When I saw them at the SWPP & BPPA Convention, they were only selling them as part of a full kit. The Snoot was the thing that interested me the most and thankfully today they were selling it separately for £30.00.

It's predominantly metal construction with a velcro strap that holds it to the Speedlite. They also supply an elastic band to give it extra grip, but as the 580EX II has rubber on each side of the head, I didn't need to use it.

You also get a couple of honeycomb grids, also metal construction.

The main reason I bought this is for professional perception. I can get a similar effect from rolling a piece of card into a cone shape and gaffer taping it to a Speedlite. This unfortunately doesn't inspire every client with confidence.

I'm yet to try it out on an actual subject, but it does seem to work pretty well from my test fires. Watch this space!

Urban Strides Arena Tour 2007

One of the areas of photography I specialise in shooting is dance, and just before Christmas, I was very privileged to be able to go on tour with a client of mine, Urban Strides.

Urban Strides are a youth Hip Hop dance troupe and were performing as part of the "Young Voices Concerts" at arenas all over the country in front of crowds up to 20000 people!

Shooting the performances threw up a few photographic challenges. It was a low light situation that demanded fast shutter speeds in order to capture the movement. Flash wasn't possible because there was smoke on the stage which would have reflected the light back similar to driving in fog at night. I ended up shooting at iso1600 using my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. This enabled me to shoot in shutter priority at 1/200sec, which was just fast enough to freeze people enough, but still have a tiny amount of blur around hands to indicate movement.



 
 

If  you would like to see the performance in full, check out the video below. If you look closely you can see me taking some of the shots above!



A personal highlight from the trip was during one of the finales. The show finale consisted of all the performers from the night wearing santas hats and dancing like idiots to the sound of Christmas songs. Well at the Manchester Evening News Arena I had a santas hat put on me and was told to take photos from the stage amongst everyone else. So there I am, dancing like an idiot like everyone else whilst taking photos, on stage in front of 20000 people! Not something I imagine many people get to do!