budrowilson
Ping Pong Prodigy
Most of my free time during middle school was spent playing ping pong at a hang-out close to school. The rules were that winner got to keep playing on the table. That means the better I got, the more I got to play...which led to a snowballing effect in my skill level.
A few months ago I picked up a table relatively cheap and put it my bonus room. I'm glad to say that I haven't lost much in the way of ping pong even though I haven't played regularly in two decades. I've now played about 30 games recently with competitors of varying skill levels, but I remain undefeated on that table. And yes, I'm proud of that... ;-) UPDATE: Well, I was finally beaten on the table. My record may be tarnished, but my desire to play remains undeterred by imperfection.
This is actually a combination of two separate shots. While my setup meant that this shot very well could have been captured all at once, out of 50 shots I never got the perfect ball placement with a satisfactory pose and facial expression. When looking through the images, I realized that since the camera was on a tripod, and the light setting stayed the same for the bulk of the shots, I could easily combine a good ball-placement shot with a shot of a pose that I liked.
strobist: 2 White Lightning Ultrazap 1600s, camera left and right (directly beside subject), diffused by gridded stripboxes. 1 White Lightning Ultrazap 1600, camera right in front of subject, diffused by a gridded 16" beauty dish. 1 YN560, camera left, bare (zoomed to 105), pointed directly across the table and used to illuminate the ball when (hopefully) I timed the ball to pass through the field of light when the camera's shutter went off. Speaking of the camera's shutter, it was triggered via a wireless remote shutter release. I was triggering the camera via remote (2-second delay), then throwing the remote on the ground before striking the ball aiming for the YN560's path of light at the moment the shutter was tripped. Mainlight triggered via Cybersyncs, the rest were triggered via optical slave.
Ping Pong Prodigy
Most of my free time during middle school was spent playing ping pong at a hang-out close to school. The rules were that winner got to keep playing on the table. That means the better I got, the more I got to play...which led to a snowballing effect in my skill level.
A few months ago I picked up a table relatively cheap and put it my bonus room. I'm glad to say that I haven't lost much in the way of ping pong even though I haven't played regularly in two decades. I've now played about 30 games recently with competitors of varying skill levels, but I remain undefeated on that table. And yes, I'm proud of that... ;-) UPDATE: Well, I was finally beaten on the table. My record may be tarnished, but my desire to play remains undeterred by imperfection.
This is actually a combination of two separate shots. While my setup meant that this shot very well could have been captured all at once, out of 50 shots I never got the perfect ball placement with a satisfactory pose and facial expression. When looking through the images, I realized that since the camera was on a tripod, and the light setting stayed the same for the bulk of the shots, I could easily combine a good ball-placement shot with a shot of a pose that I liked.
strobist: 2 White Lightning Ultrazap 1600s, camera left and right (directly beside subject), diffused by gridded stripboxes. 1 White Lightning Ultrazap 1600, camera right in front of subject, diffused by a gridded 16" beauty dish. 1 YN560, camera left, bare (zoomed to 105), pointed directly across the table and used to illuminate the ball when (hopefully) I timed the ball to pass through the field of light when the camera's shutter went off. Speaking of the camera's shutter, it was triggered via a wireless remote shutter release. I was triggering the camera via remote (2-second delay), then throwing the remote on the ground before striking the ball aiming for the YN560's path of light at the moment the shutter was tripped. Mainlight triggered via Cybersyncs, the rest were triggered via optical slave.