Dave Black Brings Light Painting to Sports Photography

To get the shot, sometimes you do crazy things. Like clinging to a wall of ice in the dark, wielding a 2-million-candlepower spotlight. Then doing it over endlessly until you get it right.

That’s what sports shooter Dave Black did to make this incredible image. With no prior ice-climbing experience, he spent four long nights perched on the edge of an ice gorge in Ouray, CO, as world-class climbers Chris Alstrin and Mike Anderson repeatedly ascended for his camera.

Even crazier, he used a creative but unpredictable photo technique no one else uses for sports. He calls it “light painting.”

This involves holding the camera’s shutter open for a long exposure while sweeping light by hand across the subject.

Black, whose photos have appeared in magazines such as National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, lightpaints to very different effect. (See more at www. daveblackphotography.com.)

Before shooting, he and the climbers scouted the area for a dramatic ice formation with suitable routes, making a few daytime ascents to learn the terrain. Then he placed his tripod-mounted Nikon D200 and 17–55mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens, with a PocketWizard MultiMAX Transceiver radio trigger, across the gorge from his subject. He usually shoots in manual exposure mode, but since his camera would be inaccessible, he used aperture-priority auto (set to f/8 at ISO 200), letting the meter determine shutter speed. He dialed exposure compensation down by –2 EV to preserve the feeling of darkness. And he set white balance to 3000K for the color of the spotlight.

Outfitted with crampons, climbing ropes, and a harness, Black went out on the rim and swept the light of a rechargeable Brinkmann Q-Beam Max Million II across the scene below. He shot whenever a climber stopped to study the route ahead. Thanks to the ice’s reflectivity and the spotlight’s power, this exposure lasted just 13 sec. “It might take many attempts to get the lighting right—enough, but not too much, light applied to the scene in an interesting way. Don’t give up after one or two,” Black says. “Start small and work your way up to big subjects like this one. Practice, then practice some more.”

Comments

[Jim Powell]

That's incredible! I've got some ice climbing shots... but nothing like that.
Thanks for sharing!

[Photographic Backgrounds]

If you have ever tried this, you will know just how hard it is to get a good result. To get such a good result in such hostile conditions is truly amazing. What a fantastic photo !