Have you ever had a creative idea that just wasn’t technically possible? For as long as I have been shooting adventure sports, I love creating image sequences of athletes in action. My favorite subject has been skiers flying off of big jumps (take a look at the back cover of my book). Not only can you watch an athlete’s every move as they fly through the air, but the resulting curved line of motion creates a strong graphic element in the image. For years I have dreamed of shooting one of these sequences, but using flash for every frame in the sequence. Last night the flash sequence became reality using the Elinchrom Pro HD ELC 1000s.
I connected with a super talented local skater, and he pulled off one trick after another in the skatepark. I used one ELC1000 head connected to my Honda 2000 watt generator, and shot sequence after sequence at twilight. Not only did the ELC 1000 flash/recycle perfectly at 10 frames a second, but the fast flash duration froze the action. In Photoshop I seamed up all the individual frames using layers and masks. Seeing these sequences has my mind churning with new sequence ideas, but this time they are going to be lit with the lightning fast ELC 1000s.