Poi Spinning at Hendry’s
Some friends and I had planned a beach bonfire for Saturday night. Alas, it rained all day… then high tide came in, aided by a Tsunami surge from the Chile earthquake.
We didn’t let that get us down, though - we just retreated to higher ground and had a fire session. I did lose a speedlight to a rogue wave - it got submerged before I could grab it. Luckily I had backups on hand!
I tried a new technique with these. In the past I would do a single exposure for each shot - I’d start the exposure, cap the lens, have the subject walk in and start spinning, fire the flash, cap the lens again, have the subject leave, uncap, and let the exposure go for 5 minutes or so. This time out, though, I decided to do one shot for the background and then layer on the subject shot in post. This is good, in that it keeps the subject from looking transparent:
Combining two shots in post did present some challenges, though - I had to mask off the subject’s body in each shot, which was painfully time consuming. Also, I’m not 100% happy with how the flames look against the sky in a couple of these…
All: Nikon D300, 12-24mm, f/11-ish, off camera flash
