Photography Tips?

[sprfrkr]

Can anyone post some tips for shooting wakeboarders for video and stills? Would being lower to the water be better, or a higher angle? Looking for a height adjustment. We are getting decent air, but the photos don't seem to convey that. It's not just in our heads!

[STANG KILLA SS]

pics dont lie

the lower the camera is the higher the rider will appear. generally.

[Anubis_79]

It depends on what you're going for. If you want to see what you're doing, as straight-on as you can get without up/down tilt would be best, say center frame at rider's waist height when they're just riding directly behind the boat. Focus your camera there and don't touch it if at all possible and take a few shots, keep it as close to that position as possible during jumps so you have a frame of reference to compare to. That way you can see where you are, like "oh, I'm only actually getting the board about waist high." It also depends on what kind of camera and lens you're using. It's all about what's around you. A real low camera with a steep upward angle can make a 2 foot high air seem like soaring if there's nothing in the frame but rider and sky. Focus on getting as much information in the view as possible with as straight an angle as possible. Easier said and done with an SLR type camera. If you've got just a basic point and shoot, maybe trying to get the top of the roostertail in the center of the frame will provide good results. I don't know the conditions of your setup, so it may take some trial and error to find the perfect spot in the boat, but eventually you'll get it sorted out.

For display type photos style is always better. Like the example above, with the right angle a small jump can look massive. It's all about perspective.

[AaronATX]

i'm new to shooting wakeboarding, but not to photography. i've found several different methods that work for me. for off-the-boat shooting, 70mm seems to be the minimum you need. I use a 70-200, and today i was shooting off the transom of a boat (Cobalt WSS) with the rider on a 65ft line and 100mm was just about perfect. As far as making airs look huge, well, huge airs to begin with help, but if you want bigger, the closer the camera gets to the water the bigger the air will appear. also it will help to catch the rider at the peak of the jump.. if you have an SLR camera with a high FPS rate (>5fps) you can just hold the shutter button and call it a day. For older SLR's with a lower burst rate (like mine, 3.5fps) it's all about catching it at the right time. prefocus on the spot on the wake where the rider will take off from, then follow them as they edge in and click the shutter right as they leave the wake, or a split second after. each shutter is a little different, but the rule of thumb is, if you see it happening through the viewfinder it's too late. if you have a point and shoot, you can work with it but it will be much more difficult to produce good photos, especially any close up.

Focal length comes into play as well, as longer focal lengths tend to make an image more compressed and flat, whereas shorter focal lengths tend to produce more barrel distortion, skewing the relative distances between objects in the frame. The lenses with the most extreme barrel distortion are generally fisheyes (~6-12mm), but regular wide-angle lenses tend to suffer from slight barrel distortion at their widest ends too ("kit" type lenses especially: nikon 18-70, canon 18-55, etc). Normally distortion is unfavorable (such as in landscape, architecture, or other shots where undistorted wide-angle photos are the desired result), but for shooting sports with air you can use it to your advantage. If you're feeling adventurous, put a photographer with a wider lens on a chase boat or tube to allow them to be closer to the wakeboarder. If you do it right you can get some sick shots that look huge.. having the tube about 3-6ft. shorter than the tow line would probably yield good results, but then again I'm still trying to work on my waterproof housing before I take my rig out on a tube, so I haven't been able to work out the kinks with a setup like this. A chase boat would work well but I'd imagine it would be harder to get a workable composition without putting safety at risk.

Also remember that lighting has ultimate control over how the photos turn out. Best time to shoot IMO is the golden hour, the hour up to and including sunset (or sunrise). But any time when the sun has more atmosphere to go through (e.g. not as high in the sky--mornings, late afternoons and evenings) typically produces the best results.

Sorry this is such a long-winded post, but I hope it helps.