rev3 dells 08112013-0018-3

On Sunday, August 11, I shot finisher portraits for the Rev3 triathlon in Wisconsin Dells. The Rev3 is designed to compete with Iron Man.

Sometimes Craigslist is pretty handy. That's where I found this job and the Rev3 team is easy to work for. It was a long day, getting up at 6:30 on a Sunday and driving 1.5 hours to the Dells and then standing for about eight hours straight with a brief lunch break. But the athletes were doing a triathlon, so I guess by comparison my job wasn't that difficult.

At the finish line, which was in Noah's Ark water park, there was a sponsor wall set up, against which I took portraits for the athletes after they finished. My job was to guide the athletes to the wall and then snap a quick photo. Usually it was just a single athlete but many of them brought in their families and triathlon mates.

The setup was simple: Nikon D200 on manual mode, SB-800 on camera with battery pack, Sekonic L-758 to meter the light. Manual exposure ensures more consistency as the exposure doesn't change depending on where you point the camera. To make things simple, I kept the flash on TTL, since I knew a light stand would've been too cumbersome in the small area and when you're hand-holding the camera you can't maintain subject-to-flash distance with every shot. Flash exposure compensation was -2/3; I wanted fill light, not blast light.

I kept a constant aperture of 5.6 with my 24-85 f/3.5 lens. I adjusted exposure with shutter speed and ISO, and of course TTL flash took care of the flash exposure. It was an overcast day, which made lighting and white balance fairly easy to keep consistent. I was on cloudy WB most of the time, with brief usage of daylight WB. Another part on the D200 broke this time (happens frequently) -- the left battery clip in the battery grip. Now I can't get the left battery out and I have a hard time getting the right one in. This is in addition to myriad snafus.

Simple job: stand in one place for eight hours and take the same shot almost 500 times. But, I'd do it again. You can see the results of my work here: http://goo.gl/XFVBO1. If you would like to hire me for an event, please contact me.