Here’s the Friday Photo of the Week. Was feeling wintery and I couldn’t help myself. Tell us if you like and why/why not.
Behind the scenes “making of” this shot and the camera/lens/spec details after the jump…
The above shot was created on a Nikon D3, using the Nikkor 24-70mm 2.8 lens (affil links to B&H). Shot at f6.3, 1/1600 sec, ISO 200. The legendary Tanner Hall is the athlete. Location: Stevens Pass, WA.
The behind-the-scenes shot below is how we captured this image. That’s me in the black on the right with my D3s and Todd Jones (TGR) on left in the yellow, shooting the RED camera, hanging outta the helicopter. BTS photo shot by Scotty.
Like or not? Why?
I love this shot because I like the snow, it looks like it was shot at night, I know how big that jump was, I love Stevens Pass, and I want to shoot stuff like this. I mainly like it because you made a great image of things I love!
I’m going to be in the minority on this: I don’t care for the shot too much.
I find the tree and pole shadows at the top very distracting. They feel disembodied. If either there were shadows along the whole top edge of the frame or the shadows were cropped out entirely, it might work better. However, either of those options would screw up the composition with the skier, which is good.
I also don’t like the vignetting. The snow that is darkened by the vignette is an odd and unnatural color. I was immediately put-off by it, despite it taking a few moments for me to realize what I was actually put-off by. Related to this, I feel that there are not enough blacks in the image and too many dark grays. I feel like I have to search the image for blacks to convince myself that the photo is properly exposed. I see what you were going for with the vignette though, but I feel that it would have been better achieved through lighting rather than post production. (Immediately after writing this, I realized that the photo was taken not at night – when it looks to me like it was taken – but during the day, which would make lighting an area that large very difficult and expensive. Maybe that just means this photo would work better if it had been taken at night.)
I think it’s pretty clear that the skier’s in the air, but it might have been nice if his shadow had been in the gap between the jump and the landing just for some added perspective.
On the plus side, the angle is interesting and the skier and jump are composed well within the frame..
Banger man, I love the comp. Super sick!
I Like! Interesting angle.
at first glance i thought i saw the Twitter bird on the mountain! lol (second photo, shadow cast)