Canon 1Dx goes Tri with Chris

A good buddy of mine, Chris, public speaker, successful business chap and wheelchair athlete is stepping up a gear by being an inspirational voice via his website and blog with his NoXcuse initiative. My shout out for personal work with the new 1Dx resulted in spending some quality time together. Creating a set of images is so much more about what you CAN do rather than what you CAN’T do … an almost identical message to that which Chris is trying to convey, whether you wheel or walk.

Our first stop was the Sheikh Hamdan Swimming complex. For those not familiar with the building, imagine a massive blue mushroom placed in the middle of the desert. Inside, the facilities are world-class. Inside action photography is always a challenge …

  there’s never enough light and a complex mix of light sources confuses even the latest white balance technology. For this reason, I brought some additional studio lights so I could retain better control. If anything, I wanted to walk away with three key shots; a true action image in the water, a nice portrait shot and an image capturing in-and-around-the-pool movement. The action shot was pretty straightforward.

I attached a 400m long sports lens, shot lots of frames per second over a total of five laps and we nailed it. I got a particularly nice full frame super wide shot at the turning point with a Pro Head flash and reflector position slightly to the left of the camera.

The portrait arose organically. As Chris got out of the pool, I opted for one of my favourite 50mm f1,2 lenses leaving me with a crystal sharp image with great colours and a shallow depth of field. It was fast enough that I didn’t need additional lights. A minimal

retouch removed the swim goggle mark around his eyes … just to remove that extra terrestrial alien look!

 Our second stop was the Dubai no rx viagra Autodrome where Chris does of lot of his bike training. Every Wednesday night the track is open to cyclists, runners and bladers to train on the grand circuit. It proved a pretty challenging shoot because it was damn dark and we had little time. Still, we managed to squeeze out a few good ones with a strong action and circuit feel. I’ve done a lot of car work here with Audi (Sketch to PDF post) and knew that corner number sixteen would give the best result.

Anyone familiar with the field of triathlon knows that running would be next in the SBR sequence but Chris just got a new fast bike delivered from the US and I want to take him to the stunning new cycling track out in the desert. You’ve just got to hold on whilst we find time in our schedules to get there …

My thanks to the Hamdan team for granting us access to the pool and to Paul and James for permission to shoot at the Autodrome.

Finally, Chris – as always it was a great pleasure spending time with you. Go. Go. Go. Get that NoXcuse site up and running!

Wk.

 

Related reading:

A marathon and a half

Chris my hero

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