A Study in Motion . . .
By John Terence Turner
Stock Asylum Columnist
March 15, 2006
©
2006 John Terence Turner
Shooting stock photography is a lot like mining. Some photographers
mine the same vein most of the time because it is their specialty. Others,
like me, look for situations that will produce a photographic gem regardless
of the category.
Accordingly, I felt that a couple on a roller coaster would make a dramatic and compelling picture. The subject has been done before so the challenge was to do it differently—and better.
 Author John Terence Turner could not make this image by sitting in the seat in front of the models. To solve the problem, he attached camera and flash to roller coaster and triggered the shutter with a radio transmitter. ( © John Terence Turner ). |
To avoid the cliché of a couple in a roller coaster against a deep blue sky at some county fair, I decided to photograph late in the day.
Shooting at twilight means using slow shutter speeds, which results in blurred action. Movement in the picture makes it more active, drawing the viewer into the moment.
Blurring can contribute much to a picture or destroy it. A technique that works well in situations like this is to use a strobe with the camera set on “rear curtain.” That means the camera, on a program setting, will expose the picture for the available light and trigger the strobe at the end of the exposure as fill light. Coming in at the end, the high-speed flash freezes details in the midst of the blurs (note the strobe-shadows of the models’ fingers).
So that covers part of the technique. But a speeding roller coaster is a tough shooting environment. You’re not in a studio up there.
I once tried this shot while riding in front of the models. The safety bar made it impossible to turn around and steadily point the camera at the models. The G-forces in the turns and the constant vibrations prohibited careful framing.
The answer was twofold: first, anchor the camera in front of the models and, second, find a location where I could operate the camera without interference from the safety bar. The technology for joining the camera with a distant photographer is a radio slave like the Flash Wizard, which was used for this image because it has a good range of operation.
The camera and strobe were super-clamped to the rear bar of the car in front of the models. Bungee cords and gaffer’s tape helped stabilize the set-up (see photo below). A Nikkor 20mm lens on a Nikon F4 body was pre-focused on the models with the aperture wide-open. The strobe was an SB26 Speedlight on an SC-17 cable.
To shoot, I stood on the loading platform, triggering the camera with the radio-slave transmitter. I had pre-determined prime shooting locations based on background elements and the car’s position during turns.
The models were instructed to act like they were having a romantic, fun time and told to stay in character since I wouldn’t be around to tell them when I was about to shoot.
With the cooperation of the roller coaster crew, we shot four circuits of the track.
Getty Images has one stock photo from this shoot and it has sold several times. I like this version better because of the Space Needle. I realize Getty didn’t select it because the Space Needle makes the location too specific. Still, I like it looming up there in the twilight, the motion causing the ghostly blurry image displacement.
Another day in the mines.
| This is what the camera set-up looked like once the equipment was securely attached to the roller coaster. (© John Terence Turner) |
(John Terence Turner has been shooting stock photography for 20 years. His work can be seen at Getty Images, Alamy and, of course, The Stock Asylum, where his column appears twice a month. He lives and works in Seattle, WA.)
Turner's web site can be found at: http://www.johnterenceturner.com.
For more of his images: click here.
For all of Turner's columns: click here.
