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RAB's Tip Pad

~ Photographing History, Aviation and People

RAB's Tip Pad

Tag Archives: Emerald City Roller Girls

Making Your Human Subjects a Movie Star

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Shooting

≈ Comments Off on Making Your Human Subjects a Movie Star

Tags

Emerald City Roller Girls, george hurrell, hollywood, photo, photograph, photography, portrait, roller derby

 (Rick A. Brown)

Most of the potential clients I’ve shown my portrait portfolio, have pointed out that I really like to portray my human subjects as larger than life.

There is no doubt about it, whether it’s a friend I portray as a badass rock star

USA, Oregon, Keizer, Bassist. MR, Digital Composite (Rick A. Brown/www.moosephoto.com) or as a Hollywood starlet from the ‘30s,

USA, Oregon, Springfield, Young Woman, MR (Rick A. Brown) I do like to show my subjects as larger than life. I’m not sure if it comes from my love of the movies and studying film criticism or from my affinity to romantic and transcendental literature, but I certainly love that look in photos of people.

Thus, when I photographed a roller derby bout last Saturday I saw this tendency as an opportunity for some dramatic sports photography.

The light was difficult; it was approaching sunset and there were a set of windows on the Western side of the building while the artificial lighting in the auditorium could not compete with this at all. I immediately saw the opportunity for this sort of dramatic shot, but wanted a wider variety of images. However, after some experimentation, I came to the conclusion that the only practical way to get good exposures was to set a proper exposure for this dramatic lighting manually and then limit my shooting to only the areas on the track that were lit well. I was photographing with a good friend, Alethea Steingisser, and it was interesting to see that we came to similar but not identical solutions.

Then came the fun mental part, imagining making a movie about women’s roller derby. I watched for the skaters to enter the well-lit zone and when something dramatic began to happen I’d hold the shutter down until either the drama ended or my camera filled its buffer. Once home, I post processed these images to maintain the contrast and applied a subtle vignette.

Later that night there was a men’s bout, that was a blast to photograph, but the dramatic lighting had evaporated by then.

Please take a look at the rest of the images from this bout.

 

Shooting for the Pure Joy of It

13 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Shooting

≈ Comments Off on Shooting for the Pure Joy of It

Tags

derby, Emerald City Roller Girls, Eugene, funm sport, photography, roller derby

I think it’s important that no matter what level you are at as a photographer that shooting for the pure joy of it needs to be part of your life. Now I must state that most of my stock shooting is fun to me. However, recently I have done some photography that is a little different, in that is a lot of fun, but other than sharing it on Facebook, I don’t think I’ll ever do anything with it.

I have told part of this story before, but I recently did some roller derby themed portraits and in pursuit of backgrounds for these images I went to a bout. Well, I wasn’t that fond of the composite portrait I made from that background and did not include that specific one in my online portfolio. However, I had a great time at the bout.

Thus, I returned to Emerald City Roller Girl bouts. Interesting thing, it seems to get more exciting with each successive bout. I’m not sure if the women were playing the game with more intensity each time I went, or it was something about becoming more familiar with the sport that made it seem so, but by my last bout (also the last of their season) this past weekend, it was nail biting intense all night long.

This last time, I also decided to concentrate on the “moments” on the track as well as the action. In my experience derby is very interesting in that it is very intense while a jam is going on and the women are hitting each other hard (more like “checking” in hockey rather than a hit in boxing), then the whistle blows for a time out and the ladies are friendly and jovial. This makes for some great “moments” to photograph and the folks on Facebook seem to like these photos as much as the action photography.

Here is the total collection of the championship and the earlier Furies bout.

 

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