Fun at the Dunes

Sergey and I headed out to the Great Sand Dunes NP last weekend for some photography. He had this crazy idea about doing some Karate shots with him wearing a full uniform with a black belt and me taking high speed images of his jumps. I really liked the idea, so I took some of my lighting equipment, along with the D3s and the Nikon 24mm f/1.4G.

The weather was OK, but the winds were too strong, blowing at 15-20 miles per hour with very strong gusts. Our photography plans pretty much collapsed with the winds, but we still decided to stay and try out a few shots. Here is Sergey doing a front kick:

I shot it with an off-camera external flash mounted directly on a lightstand with no light modifiers. I wanted to keep it simple, because we did not have much time and the winds were blowing dust all over the place, especially into my eyes. I forgot the darn sunglasses in my car and it was a mile away from us, so there was no going back. Shooting against the sun was not easy either, because I was not getting enough light even at full power. The Pocketwizard Plus II units that I took with me were useless, since their slow sync time of 1/250 was not cutting it for fast motion, so I switched to Nikon CLS and shot high-speed sync. I had to bump up my ISO a little bit and place the strobe very close to Sergey.

We then switched off the flash and decided to use some natural light. The shots were turning out pretty good with the 9 FPS that I was getting out of the D3s, so when Sergey got a little tired, I decided to join the action :)

Dang, I am so out of shape! Jumping 360 was a piece of cake for me before and although I can still do it, the kick is not as strong anymore. Oh well, that’s what happens when you do not practice for 10 years…

I had to try an aerial Bruce Lee-style front kick too, although jumping high off the sand was challenging for both of us :)