Night Skiing

[Mike_Guilbault]

I need to photograph some night-skiing for a local resort. Any suggestions?

[ChrisPurves]

Do it after dark?

Okay - I know don't kid around. Mike, if the hill is lit well enough and your camera has decent high iso sensitivity you can try available light. You will have to shoot when your subjects are in the main pocket of light. Lots of different opportunities here. Pan with the subjects, shoot stationary skiers to look like they are resting and talking. Could you be on the back of a snow machine and shoot as you and the subjects are going downhill.
Same kind of thing but with on camera flash.

You could set up strobes to light one area and shoot within that area.

I've seen shots of the whole hill and a lot of skiers coming down the hill in a line with flares.
Actually my flippant remark at the beginning of this post brings up another point. Shoot at about 1/2 hour after sunset on a clear day. The sky will be a dark blue and there will still be definition in the snow and on the hill.
If you can have a great sunset, use on camera flash so your flash exposure is the same as the sunset. You will get a perfectly exposed skier in the middle of a great sunset.

Good luck - post the results.

Cheers
Chris

[Mike_Guilbault]

Thanks Chris... that's along the lines I was thinking. I appreciate the tips.

[Noel_Carboni]

I haven't tried it professionally, though I have had my camera at night skiing venues, and I got very few keepers. It's a combination of a lot of moving subjects, challenging dynamic range, and difficult conditions to shoot in. No easy task! Night shooting in general is not easy.

Compositionally, I would think you'd want ambient light. That way you'd portray the "magic" of night skiing. It would be a heck of a trick to light up a whole hill with coordinated strobes, though I suspect it could be done with enough effort.

Use high ISO, big aperture glass, anticipate doing everything you can digitally to the images, try to find the most brightly lit portions of the area, and hope for some luck.

You didn't say whether you're going to be trying to capture skiiers en masse, closeups of particular skiiers, or all of the above. I should think a wide field shot would be easier, as some motion in your subjects could be tolerable.

Good luck, and please post a sample of your results here. I'd love to see how they come out.

-Noel

[TimRucci]

I've done lots of skiing, but seldom at night because few western resorts offer it, and the older I get, the less energy I have left after skiing during the daytime. Visiblility is far worse than in daylight and that makes it statistically a little more dangerous.

But that said, the one thing I distinctly remember about night skiing is that lighting is poor, and even poorer for photography. Even if you find the bright spots at your location you will still have problems with facial shadows unless you use some fill flash (especially if you're talking about true night skiing when it's actually dark).

My guess is that you will need to use fill flash in order to get anything usable, and as someone has already said, you will probably also need a little bit of luck. High iso is a given, even with the fastest glass, because in additon to getting a decent exosure, you are also dealing with a moving subject. This is assuming you are talking about shots of individuals skiing.

I suspect that the flash will also help freeze your moving subject, and I would be sure to use 2nd curtain synch on the flash, so that any blur would be behind the moving skier, rather than in front.

I hope you will post some samples because I am really curious what kind of results can be achieved in something like this.

Good luck...

[ksgkphoto]

Hi,

I've done a fair amount of "in the dark" shooting... usually at Halloween.. so its not ski-ing...

BUT... what I have found is the following...

Large aperture glass... sounds good in concept BUT: its usually too dark to focus anyway AND you want to use something other than f2.8 to improve the odds of getting in-focus imagery... its harder for you because the skiers move faster... perhaps try to find a natural "slow spot" on the slope.

My strobe based solution is to prefocus at a certain point and then with camera on tripod shoot when the participant moves over that point...

For my shooting I place a laser beam spot on the ground where the focus point is and use that to tell me when to shoot... Camera is in manual focus.. and because of the strobes is preset at the correct aperture.

but I'm shooting in pitch dark and using strobes...

Note these shots were taken with my venerable 10D.. the 5DMkii with ISO3200.. is another matter...

2008_Halloween This album was on my old server.. moving it to the new one right now will take a few hours... the kids looking down are looking at the laser spot...

[ChrisPurves]

Originally Posted by Mike_Guilbault

I need to photograph some night-skiing for a local resort. Any suggestions?

Hi Mike:- Any Luck? Can you post examples?

Cheers
Chris