Gear Photography: Lessons Learned

Recently, I embarked on an effort to sell all of the gear that's been gathering dust in my closet. Everyone loves pictures, so my first step was to photograph all of the equipment. I'm pretty pleased with how well everything turned out, especially given how little effort I put into the whole shoot. Here are some things that went well, and some other things that I can improve next time around.

This was my general setup. Lights are a pair of Elinchrom BX 500 Ri monolights. I've got a beauty dish on the one to camera right, blowing out the background wall, and also giving some ambient fill and a nice rim-light effect. And I've got a second one at camera left with a strip box mounted at some cockamamie angle.

I specifically went for the strip box because while I definitely needed some diffusion, I also wanted the light to be hard enough to elucidate the texture of the equipment. I wanted to make it easier for a person to look at the image and imagine what it would be like to hold each piece in his/her hands.

As you can see, I got the reflections by just tossing a dirty piece of plexi onto a table and putting the gear on top of that. I shot pretty long, generally in the 120mm (180mm-equiv) to 200mm (300mm-equiv) range, and I believe my subject distance was around 10 feet. The subject was around 6 feet in front of the distant wall.

Mistakes

Just to keep things easy, let's make a list:

• I started off with the key light about a stop too low, so the detail of the body was difficult to see. You can see how this image looks really back-lit compared to the shot above.
• Lazy is good, too lazy is bad. I didn't really clean anything (lazy!), and it generally didn't make much of a difference (yay!). But failing to even wipe off the surface of the plexi was too lazy. You can clearly see a whiteboard-marker mark near the lower-right corner of the camera.
• You can't (directly) see it, but I wasn't able to lock down the rotation of my lens in its tripod-foot collar, which led to the rotation drifting any time I touched the camera. Keeping everything exactly the same (as much as possible) is the easiest way to cut down time in the studio, and time applying custom adjustments to each and every image during post-processing.
• Along the same vein, I should have marked the center of the frame on the plexi. This would've made it easy to keep the framing and magnification the same as I moved from piece to piece.

Successes

Thankfully, enough things went right that things worked out in the end. A couple examples:

• Stayed focused. I had a good idea of the things I needed to get right, and the things that wouldn't make a big difference. In particular, I didn't want to spend a ton of time on images that I'll likely never use again.
• Brought a backup body. For some reason, my first body wasn't triggering the strobes, and if I didn't have a backup, the evening would've been wasted.
• Shot long. I ended up at f/7.1 and 250s most of the time, which is right around peak sharpness for this lens/body. It also gave me plenty of magnification without having to get the camera really close to the subject. The ~10ft throw also gave me some reasonable DoF.
• Picked a reasonable lighting design. I basically just threw some stuff together, given my prior studio experiments. The beauty dish hitting the back of the room turned out to be a really great idea. You can see how the rim light wraps around the right side of the lens in the picture. The level of diffusion on the key light was pretty good as well. Plenty of directionality, and depth and texture, but nothing too harsh.
• Fixed things as early as possible. This meant that by the time I got home, I just picked the ones that didn't suck and pretty much auto-processed them all. I didn't do any cropping (too lazy), and only fixed rotation in a few cases (too lazy).

So yeah, that's that. Hit me up if you've got any questions.

Touch and Go (2014 National Pole Vault Summit)

Pole vault is all about taking flight. And fittingly, everything that happens after an attempt centers on preparing for the next time you take flight. Like an airplane executing a touch-and-go, you only land so you can take off again.

If that last attempt was a clearance (a make), you stick with what's working, or maybe you tweak something to be sure you'll also clear the next height. If it was a miss, you figure out what went wrong, and what you can change to make the bar the next time around.

As a reminder, this is Part 2 of a series about what it feels like to pole vault. The thoughts are my own, and they're illustrated by photos I captured at the Elite Meet at this year's National Pole Vault Summit. I have no idea what goes through anyone's head but my own.

(In photo: Sarah Sheppard)

A miss

One essential truth of pole vault is that every competition ends with three consecutive misses. Some misses are great — if you're jumping better than you've ever jumped before, awesome! You raised the bar. But that new milestone has to sit somewhere, and the only way to find out where is to try and fail to go that little bit higher.

(In photo: Mike Arnold)

Some misses are frustrating. You can feel that next height coming. You can taste it. But all the ducks aren't quite in a row, yet. Maybe you got off the ground with that next big stick, but you didn't manage to link up the swing yet.

Well, sometimes you have to take things one stage at a time. First you get off the ground. Then you get upside down. Then you try to pull everything together and make a bar.

Whenever I move up to an unfamiliar pole, I try to do that on my first attempt, so that I can get comfortable with the first two attempts before I have to make the third one count.

(In photo: Mark Hollis)

Some misses are demoralizing. It's like, you're all set to show the world how it's done. This is going to be your meet. They're going to see a whole new you… And then you trip coming out of the starting gate, and you have to watch the rest of the competition from the sidelines… "That's not how it was supposed to go… What happened?"

(In photo: Nick Mossberg)

It's times like those when you have to take that miss (and, perhaps, that entire competition) in stride. Everyone messes up. Everyone has messed up at what seems like the worst possible moment, at the one meet that really mattered. In my own case, my last collegiate meet was an exceptionally mediocre performance at the national championships. It felt like a wasted opportunity, but in some ways it was a stepping stone.

Part of what it means to improve in the pole vault is that you have to take once-in-a-lifetime meets — once-in-a-lifetime opportunities — and you have to figure out how to make them commonplace. The first time you reach that next level, it feels amazing. "Now I'm jumping with the big boys." But as you advance, so do your aspirations. And with hard work, today's demoralizing failure will look a lot more like a small speed-bump in hindsight.

(In photo: Jordan Scott)

A make

Clearing bars is the pole vaulter's bread and butter. But just like you can have an amazing miss, you can also have a frustrating clearance. Generally, those are cases where your skill just didn't show up, but you had enough luck (or brute force) to make the bar anyway.

In college, my coach discussed the concept of a pride line, which is essentially a standard of acceptable performance. Any performance above that standard could be considered reasonable. Below, though, is just unacceptable, inexcusable, and shameful.

Where that line sits will vary from person to person, and situation to situation, but the most frustrating clearances are the ones where you performed below that threshold, didn't deserve to make the bar, and cleared it anyway. A make is a make, so you take it, but sometimes it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. Serves you right. Wake up and make it count next time.

By contrast, when you make a monster clearance, it feels amazing. "Yeah, I rocked that bar; I was nowhere near it." Regardless of whether you just started at a conservative opening height, or you're jumping better than expected, it's a confidence-inspiring result. You're firing on all cylinders, and you're ready to bring that heat at the next height.

(In photo: Kylie Hutson)

Then there are the surprises. As I mentioned in Part 1, sometimes I will make a mistake, and then correct for it in mid-flight, and make the bar by virtue of having made the right correction at the right time. Other times, I have doubts or fears, but I still manage to execute well enough to clear an unexpected height. "Woah, did I really just do that?! Boom, son." That's also a great feeling.

In the next episode, I follow some of the crowd interactions that I saw during the elite competition.

(In photo: Trey Hardee)

Take Flight! (2014 National Pole Vault Summit)

For me, pole vault is a sport of mixed emotions: excitement, terror, anticipation, joy, sorrow, and so many others. But I know that many of my non-vaulting friends have trouble understanding why we behave the way we behave, and what parts of the vault elicit which of those emotions. So after taking photos at the 2014 National Pole Vault Summit, I'm hoping to give y'all a hint of what it actually feels like to pole vault, at least from my perspective.

First and foremost, pole vault is dynamic — feet fly, limbs move, poles bend and recoil — so I hope my photos can help you imagine what it'd be like to experience those sensations as well.

At the head of the runway. Anticipation. When I'm jumping well, my mind is clear. "Just do what you do." When my technique needs to change, I try to repeat and repeat and repeat the change to myself enough that it'll just happen when the time comes. Because once the run starts, you can't think — it's mostly instinct by that point.

(Melissa Gergel)

Every vaulter has their own start routine. Some people just grab the pole and take off, others (myself included) almost-ceremonially check their grip, pantomime a pole-plant, and then raise the pole, take a step back, and go. Consistency is a big part of the vault, and having a consistent start is the foundation for a consistent run.

Once the run begins, I'm on autopilot. I still have the tiniest amount of control, but by that point it's practically an illusion. This is one of the most frustrating things about the pole vault — there's a chasm between knowing what you need to change and actually implementing that change, and turning the idea into action (especially during a meet) can be extraordinarily difficult. Most of the real thinking happens during practice.

(Trey Hardee)

As the run continues, you've got to be in a rhythm. Nice, high knees. Upright torso. Balanced and relaxed. A consistent run is the foundation for a consistent plant and takeoff, and the plant is coming up fast.

In my own case, I've been trying to change my plant for the last couple years, so I'm a bit more lucid during this section of the vault than I consider to be normal. Even so, like a dream, my memory of this section of the vault disappears by the time I land on the mat — if I have a problem here, it can take me a few attempts to notice, let alone to correct.

(Hiroki Ogita)

Terror. The plant feels like the single moment of greatest danger in the vault, and it simply takes repetition and familiarity to ignore that feeling. As a human, the "safety" position is curled up in a ball, and to vault well, this is the exact moment when you need to expose yourself as much as possible, reach as tall as possible, and just know that your fears are unfounded… hopefully…

(Renaud Lavillenie)

Next up, the swing. The swing is challenging because it's another foundational move. Like the run, you can kind of feel whether you're swinging well or not, but the real proof will be in how much energy you maintain once you're upside down. Think of it like building a house — the foundation might look fine, but you won't know for sure until you try to build something on top of it. The swing is a major aspect of the transition from moving horizontally to moving vertically, and a poor swing can easily cut a lot of height off your jump.

The swing (and, incidentally, everything else once I'm in the air) are also dream-like parts of the vault for me. I can react to things in the moment, but I rarely remember what happened after the jump is over.

(Jeff Coover)

Despite never recalling the extension, I know that I'm at least somewhat lucid in the moment, because if I need to change the end of a vault to make a bar, I do so. Kind of like tripping and catching yourself before you fall, it's a pretty automatic reaction for me.

The extension is one of the slowest parts of the vault, especially as you jump higher and higher. You already added most of the energy during the run, you did most of the steering during the swing, and now you have to hold things steady and get the pole to toss you in the right direction. Of course, that still takes a lot of physical exertion, but the motions are finer and more precise.

(Becky Holliday)

The push-off and the pike are essentially the last phases of the vault. After that point, you either made it or you didn't, and you just wait until you're no longer flying, get up off the mat, and get ready to go again.

This has been the story of taking flight. The next episode will bring us back down, again.

(Jack Whitt)

2014 National Pole Vault Summit: Preamble

A variety of elite pole vaulters pose with members of the Flying Dragons Pole Vault Club at the 2014 National Pole Vault Summit, held in Sparks, NV.

This was my third year attending the Summit. Just as in previous years, the event reinforced the notion that elite vaulters are normal people, just like the rest of us non-elites: they came from the same backgrounds, they've faced many of the same challenges, and they've made many of the same sacrifices. It feels like the difference between us and them is a difference in magnitude, rather than a difference in nature — we all do the same kinds of things, but they turn it up to eleven.