A Photographer's POV at the CrossFit Games (PhotoFit #16)

We all have those projects that are sitting on a hard drive that we keep "meaning to get to."  During the 2014 CrossFit Games, my first season shooting at the Games, I hooked up a gopro to the top of my camera and just let it roll as I tried to get the shot.  Fast forward to now, I finally got around to going through the content and splicing together some kind of coherent edit.  Other than the silliness of seeing sort of what I see at the Games, I quickly realized there were two main takeaways watching these videos First, just how complicated it is to shoot at big events.  Trying to get the shot is a lot more than just pushing a button.  Nailing that perfect composition means lining up the athlete during their decisive moment, with the right light, without a judge or other athlete getting in the way, and putting yourself in the perfect position to do all of that.  Secondly, how I shoot in terms of shutter mode, which I'll go into more detail below the fold.

Lauren Fisher, Nikon D4, Tamron 24-70 - Copyright CrossFit, Inc 2016

To briefly summarize the arc of the video above.  This all takes place at the 2014 CrossFit Games.  I kicked off the week off Hermosa Beach at 5am to capture the start of the Games as the competitors swam out and around the pier.  I started on the dingy, but quickly got switched over to a jetski (which I couldn't gopro from).  From there, the footage picks up on Friday morning with the team kickoff and the individuals taking on the triple 3.  Next up, big man, Sam Dancer crushing the 1RM deadlift workout (a workout he would again win when he competed as an individual athlete in 2016).  From there, I've got some clips of me shooting from on top of and at the base of the soccer stadium during the Muscle Up Biatholon.  What the gopro doesn't capture is the insane heat and lack of shade.  I was extra soggy during that bit.  From there, one of my favorite all time events, the 21-15-9 complex.  I'm shooting from the media pit, my favorite spot to shoot from in the Tennis Stadium, during golden hour.  The sun is setting behind the athletes and this is when the money shots happen.

Camille Leblanc-Bazinet - Nikon D4 Sigma 120-300, Copyright CrossFit, Inc 2016

It is at this point that I think it really starts coming across just how tough it is to get a clean image during a crowded event.  In the Tennis Stadium, it is simply chaos.  From the huge rig, to the equipment, judges, staff, athletes, and volunteers, there are just countless ways for your perfectly framed shot to get ruined.  I'm constantly on the move trying to get everything to line up right, and find lanes between obstructions to zero in on athletes during that critical second.  Again, to connect with last week's post, this is why I love shooting tight.  The more I zoom in the more I'm able to isolate my subject from the chaos around them.

Rich Froning, Nikon D4 Nikon 70-200, Copyright CrossFit, Inc 2016

From there, the speed clean ladder was the most insane event I've ever shot.  Having eight lanes of athletes charging through five barbells in a race against the clock and each other was nuts.  I was positioned dead center, with other photographers from the team to my left and right to cover those lanes.  You can see just how quick the athletes are moving and how fast you have to make decisions about which lane to shoot and which lifts to focus on.  I also think its important to realize that sometimes the best shot isn't the one straight in front of you.  The angles I had on Froning for example, to my left, I thought were actually more interesting in some cases than shooting athletes in the lane right in front of me.  You can also see me dump my camera towards the end of some of those takes, that's because I'm switching over to a 24-70 to grab those finishing shots.  With the speed of the event and the athletes basically jumping right on me, I stuck with the safety lens to make sure I didn't really miss anything.  To me, that wide angle zoom affords me the largest margin of error.

Lauren Fisher, Nikon D4 Nikon 70-200, Copyright CrossFit, Inc 2016

For the final event, I was assigned to float, so I basically had to run around the stands to try and help fill out the team's coverage in case I could find something neat the shooters in the prime positions couldn't get.  This really though felt like I was able to experience the final of the CrossFit Games among the fans - with myself being one of them - and able to do my dream job at the same time.

Mat Fraser, Nikon D4 Tamron 24-70, Copyright CrossFit, Inc 2016

For my second bit of nerd talk, and something I don't think I've really hit on before, what shutter setting do I use?  Single, continuous low, continuous high (or whatever the canon equivalents are).  I exclusively shoot in single shutter.  This might sound blasphemous to sport shooters, but you don't need 12fps to shoot sports, you just need to anticipate when things are going to happen.  On the Nikon D4, I have some absurd frames-per-second, but I never use it.  In single shutter, I just have a quick touch and when those key critical moments are happening, might rapidly click the shutter and get between 3-5 frames in a second.  But for the most part, I'm just getting a single frame here or there.  I've played around with shooting in continuous (motor driving) but I find it just ends up with a lot of crap and a lot of extra frames you'll never use.  I'm usually a one-man-band, so that's going to slow down my ingest, clog up my memory cards, fill my hardrives, and make the edit process take longer.  In a team setting, shooting on contious high is an editors nightmare.  It clogs up our network bandwith, crushes their ingest queue, and quickly puts you on their shit list as they have to cull through 1000s of frames of crap.  

Josh Bridges, Nikon D4 Nikon 70-200, Copyright CrossFit, Inc 2016

You can hear all through the video that while I'm shooting I'm usually grabbing photos in bursts of two or three in a second.  When I see that critical moment lining up, I do want to give myself some leeway for focus and timing, so I'll pop off a few frames with just a rapid click on the shutter button.  I've messed around with the same style of shooting with continuous shutter on, but very very quickly find myself not taking two or three photos per moment, but more like five to eight.  Over the course of an event that will add to 1000s of more photos, while my hit count might not actually go up at all.

Julie Foucher, Nikon D4 Sigma 120-300, Copyright CrossFit, Inc 2016

Shutter goes hand in hand with buffer, and I think that's worth mentioning here.  Frames-per-second is one thing, but I think on a sports camera what's more important is buffer.  If I can just keep shooting as fast as I need for as long as I want and the camera keeps just chugging away, I'm happy.  If I start snapping and the action gets busier and all of a sudden the buffer is clogged and slowing down my shooting, I get very grumpy.  With the D4 and most sports bodies, this is very rarely possible.  Especially during the speed clean ladder, you can hear me starting off, getting some coverage of each of the athletes, but as the race picks up, and the athletes get closer, I'm firing more and more frames trying to hit as many athletes as possible while they are running towards me.  By shooting my single shutter method, that buffer never gets clogged and from start to finish I'm able to just keep shooting.  If though, I shot on continuous and was just spraying at 12fps the entire heat, by the time the athletes got close and we were really into that critical lift, my buffer would be getting very close to full and I'd have this awkward moment where the money shot is happening, but I have to wait for the camera to process.  The only times I've ever filled up a buffer is in the few instances of when I've shot continuous.

I hope this video and post, while long and meandering, helps illustrate what it is actually like to be shooting from the sidelines of the CrossFit Games.  The days are long and hot, and the job is physically grueling, but I wouldn't really trade it for anything else.

If you like what you've read, please share.  Feel free to post some content suggestions below so I know what you're looking for in my next post.  For bookings email shaun@superclearyphoto.com.  And as always, follow @supercleary on instagram and SuperClearyPhoto on Facebook.

How to Develop RAW Fitness Photos (PhotoFit #10)

This post has been sitting in my drafts for about two years, and I'm finally getting around to finishing it! I'm going to talk about the basics of post processing that I use and have worked well for me.  Before I go any further, this will be entirely focused on Adobe Lightroom, which is both cheap ($10 a month through the creative cloud or around $100 standalone) and an unbelievably powerful tool to any photographer.

Step 1 of my post processing guide, and this is a step you have to take before you ingest your images to the computer: Shoot RAW.  I won't really get into a long discussion about the long-standing argument about shooting RAW vs JPEG, but just accept that RAW wins.  RAW is basically the ingredients to the cake, but not the cake.  It is everything you need for a perfect image, but the image isn't done yet.  Taking that further what that really means is that you control the final look of the image and nothing is baked into the file by the computer in the camera.  The most obvious place this impacts is white balance, and if you've ever shot inside a decrepit warehouse gym, you understand how easily white balance is thrown off by bad lighting.  If you shoot JPEG, white balance is determined by the camera, and while it can be altered in post, it cannot be corrected the same way as RAW.  RAW files influence the final image in a number of other ways, but all you need to know is this is the largest, cleanest, most untouched file your camera can produce.  This should be your starting point for an edit, not a compressed JPEG that limits your options.

Dan Baxt at Active Life Athletics

So I'll go over a basic edit that I'll preform on an individual image basis and the usual order I'll go about.  (Note: I have basic presets that I've developed and will generally import with on of these active based on the image I'm ingesting -- my normal workflow will skip a number of these steps)

First things first, skip everything else and head down to Lens Correction.  I almost always use lens correction (except with fish eye lenses where I want the distortion) because it corrects a number of the issues you can experience with a wide range of lenses like distortion and vignetting.  

Next head to camera calibration.  I'll usually select "camera standard" which will give a fairly good starting point to how the image looked on the back of your camera.  As a note, you'll find these panels towards the bottom of the develop module.  If you're starting your edit from scratch, I want both of these changed first because they will impact the coloring and exposure of the image slightly across the entire shot.

Cropping:  I can't overstate how crucial this phase is.  Because of the way focus systems work, you may not be able to frame a photo perfectly, and get it tact sharp, because of that framing and composition could be off.  After those previous basic adjustments are made, the crop is whats going to nail the composition of the image.  I won't go nuts about composition here, but before you edit your image, it should be cropped as well as straightened.  A crooked photo is not interesting, it's crooked.  Any shot that has a horizon line or a straight vertical beam in it needs to have that line straight in the final image.  Very very minor tweaks add huge value in "finishing" the image.

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Paige Miller, Long Beach, New York

Next up the two most critical steps: White Balance and Exposure.

White Balance adjustments help correct for all the issues that can happen when the camera misinterprets what the actual color of a scene was, or you can adjust to get the image more in line with how you want it to look (realistic vs. creative).  To correct this, I'll hit the eye dropper and then sample an area of white/grey in the image.  That will usually get the WB close, and will then just need a minor adjustment on the temperature slider.

Now exposure is other huge global adjustment that radically impacts the image.  This is where you're correcting for the brightness/darkness of the image.  Especially in dark indoor locations, you can really save an image here.  The exposure slider must be used with caution and not as a primary way of getting the image properly exposed.   As exposure is added to an image, more and more noise is introduced (a common theme in editing). As a rule of thumb you don't ever want to adjust this slider more than 1 full stop (between -1.0 to +1.0).  Especially using cheaper camera bodies, pushing much more than this will not save your image, but make it really look worse.

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Random hero, Flex on the Mall 2016

Next up, contrast.  I like a strong contrasty image.  I've never found a reason to go below 0, and I'll usually land around +25.  Contrast can also be adjusted in the tone curve section by adjusting the point curve to medium contrast or strong contrast.  Play around and see what method works for your look.  You'll notice the harder you adjust contrast though how the color and exposure of the image will be altered as well, so you may have to go back and get tweaking.

Highlights and shadows -- the bright parts and dark parts of your image.  When I first started, it seemed to make sense to put the highlights to -100 and the shadows to +100.  That was really just because I had no idea what I was doing and I thought it looked neat.  It doesn't.  Like anything else, use adjustments with moderation.  But some examples when to make big changes with these sliders: extreme dynamic range.  Let's say you shoot on the beach.  It is very tough to get the subject, as well as the sky properly exposed in the same image.  In this case, I would under expose my subject so I could still get something like a blue sky, and then bring the shadows up in the edit.  Normally in a gym environment, I want to bring down the highlights a bit to get a better skin tone, and pull up the shadows slightly.  

Whites/blacks -- again, these should be tweaked with caution.  I like a strong, contrasty image, so I generally increase the whites, decrease the blacks, that helps put more "punch" in the shot.  The "professional" way of doing this right has you holding the option key and sliding the whites until a white outline begins to develop, and doing the same thing with the blacks until a black shadows starts to fill in.  

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Katrin Davidsdottir, ECC 2016

Presence might be my favorite place to experiment because so much can be done in just a few little tweaks.  +100 clarity is the first thing any amateur photographer will do when they open up Lightroom.  It makes everyone look like they are cut out of stone and have huge muscles -- the "300 effect".  The more you get comfortable working and editing your images, you'll realize, moderation is again key.  Clarity can add a lot of structure to an image, but it will also make everything look extremely post-processed and not real.  I think for a fitness scene - +30 is "moderate."  Vibrance and saturation deal strictly with the color of the image.  When you hear about "desaturating" an image, that's where this work is done.  Tweaking a combination of the vibrance/saturation sliders will pull color out of an image and add a fade.  Cranking these sliders too far the other way will make the colors cartoonish.  Again, you're shooting RAW so for a standard edit, I'm going to bring up my vibrance to around +10 to get some color back in the image, and the saturation anywhere between 5-10.

Let's go all the way down now to "detail" and specifically "noise reduction".  Noise reduction is a huge debate in digital photography.  Noise reduction is going to pull out all that digital grain that develops when a camera shoots at high ISO or an exposure was wrong and you've heavily corrected it with the exposure sliders.  For the most part, I would stay away from ever using noise reduction more than a +10.  Reason being is that as that slider's value increases, detail is lost and smoothed over in an effort to get rid of the digital static.  My advice would be to just try and nail the exposure in camera - even if that means shooting at a very high ISO instead of trying to "fix it" in post production.  Some purists insist on not ever using this slider, but I find it very useful, especially if you have a lot of blacks near the edges of a high ISO image.  A small tweak on this slider will help smooth out those edges without doing "damage" to the detail of the subject.

So that's my basic process that I go through in Lightroom.  Like I said, I have presets that I've built and use in most scenarios as a starting point, and then go through these steps to "finish" my image.  The combo of the RAW image and Lightroom are a powerful duo, but always remember to use those sliders with moderation.  A good image should stand on its own legs without having to have every slider adjusted "+100, -100."  Get editing and let me know how it works out.

If you like what you've read, please share.  Feel free to post some content suggestions below so I know what you're looking for in my next post.  For bookings email shaun@superclearyphoto.com.  And as always, follow @supercleary on instagram and SuperClearyPhoto on Facebook.

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Mary Cipriano, Strong is Beautiful 2016

KCECC 2015 - Shooting Indoor Events (PhotoFit #8)

Read the previous #photofit columns here

I had the great privilege of shooting for Kill Cliff at Ben Bergeron's East Coast Championship last month (actually two months now).  This event is the new high watermark to serve as a showcase for elite athletes.  It's not a 3-day slaughter fest.  It's not the CrossFit Games.  It almost feels more like CrossFit camp where high level athletes are brought under the same roof for a quick competition where the stakes and pressure are much lower than they are used to dealing with.  The end result?  An amazing event that allows the fans to watch the highest-level athletes do their thing.

All weekend I was teamed up with my good friend Chris Nolan (@metconphotos) so we split the event coverage as Kill Cliff had more than a dozen sponsored athletes on the floor.  I'll use this post as a jumping off point to discuss getting the perfect exposure at indoor competitions.

Lindsey Valenzuela Nikon D4, Nikon 70-200 2.8, f2.8, 1/500th, ISO 6400

During indoor events, arriving at a good exposure, quickly, is critical.  You want to be able to focus on the event and the action, and not constantly readjusting your settings.  Let's put together a run-down for how to go about setting an exposure fast, and accurately.

For indoor events, I will always shoot in full manual.  I will set my own shutter, aperture, and iso.  I'll keep white balance on auto.  For indoor events, I'm normally struggling to get enough light to get a good exposure.  As a baseline, I always want a shutter speed of 1/320 minimum, but would prefer 1/500.  So what's the process I go through to lock in my settings?

Ragnheiður Sara Sigmundsdottir - Nikon D4, Sigma 120-300, 1/1000th, f2.8, ISO5000

1.  Survey the room:  The first step is as simple as looking around and seeing what the room you're shooting in is made up of.  Are there windows?  That is the most critical element, because that will mean the best light will always come from that direction, and that light may increase or dim over the course of the day.  If there are windows, I'm always going to want to be mindful of shooting with those windows to my back and asking athletes to face towards the light to get the best possible results.  

If there are no windows, metering actually becomes much easier because the light does not change over the day.  Again, I want to survey and see where the lights are in the gym, how many there are, if they are all the same, and if their color is all the same.  You need to identify whether there are "dark spots" where the ceiling lights aren't even, if bulbs are out, or if there's a fairly even coverage of light.

Mat Fraser cleaning 375lbs (he missed the jerk) Nikon D4, NIkon 70-200, 1/1000th, f2.8, ISO 5000

2.  Take test shots in different positions:  Once I see what sort of light I'm dealing with, I'll guess a baseline exposure -- indoors I'll start at 1/500th, f2.8, ISO 3200.  I'll grab someone in a few different spots across the room and see how that exposure looks.  I'll use ISO first to adjust.  Obviously, if the image is too dark, I'll push up my ISO.  My usual workhorse is the Nikon D4, I won't think twice about moving to 6400 or 8000, but I'd really prefer not to shoot between 10,000-12,800.  There is a noticeable noise and dullness to the image that is introduced.  If I move my exposure up to ISO 6400/8000 and am still not seeing much of an improvement, I'll consider slowing my shutter a bit to maybe 1/320th.  What am I looking for when I say a "good exposure?" I want to see the subjects face lit to the point their eyes are clear.  I want some balance between the subject and the background, but I'm not overly concerned with how bright the background is.

Lauren Fisher: Nikon D4, Nikon 70-200, 1/500th, ISO 8000

3.  Using the in-camera meter:  (for this method, set your meter system to center-weighted).  Instead of just sort of "guessing" the base exposure or how to fine tune your settings, I can use the in-camera meter (those hashmarks inside the viewfinder that are usually blinking to the right or left of center.  Using a center weighted meter, the camera will tell me whether whatever the focus point is on is over or under exposed.  

4.    Test and chimp.  How are my shots coming out?  Thankfully, we don't have to go to the darkroom.  Cameras have this magical screen attached that we can refer to.  While I don't want to remain glued to my screen, I do want to use this as a tool to make sure that the baseline setting I've decided on are still delivering consistent results.  A major helper I'll use is highlights alert.  Inside your camera's playback/display settings you can enable "highlight alerts" which will create blinking area in any part of the image is that is blown out and won't be able to be saved in post.  Having that blinking alert on the screen is extremely helpful because I can know without extensively examining the screen that I need to dial back my exposure, just by seeing it blinking.

Rich Froning - Nikon D4, Sigma 120-300, 1/500th, F2.8, ISO 8000

5.  Shoot! Now, use those settings you've locked into the camera and shoot the event.  Remember what you learned when you surveyed the room -- are there dark spots?  Are there bright spots?  Instead of now having to worry about remetering and all that, I'll just know as I move into the darker part of the room to start compensating with ISO or shutter.

In practice:

The floor of the ECC was in the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston -- a large convention hall with even ceiling lights front to back, no windows.  All the lights were the same color and brightness.  Great, because that means wherever I'm shooting the exposure should be the same.

For the first event, I went out with my D4 and Sigma 120-300 2.8 (my favorite bigger event lens).  I started off the same way, f2.8, 1/500th, iso 3200.  After a shot, I could see that was much too dark so I went up to iso 6400.  I shot about a heat's worth, looked at the results during the break and then pushed up the ISO just a little more to 8000.  This gave me a solid exposure, while still maintaining a fast shutter speed that helps keeps details sharp.

Brooke Ence - Nikon D4, Nikon 70-200, 1/500th, F2.8, ISO 8000

Of course, good ol' Ben Bergeron likes to switch things up.  At the end of the speed clean and jerk workout, the remaining athletes came out to work up to a 1rm clean and jerk.  The lights came down, and just a spot hit the platform.  So, same procedure.  I shot a few frames over at the platform, even the background now went to black, I actually was able to dramatically drop my ISO from 8000 to about 3200.  Again, after the first few athletes lifted, I went through the same procedure, tinkering with my ISO to get the shot just right without blowing out the highlights.

Over the course of the weekend, the only real dark spot I found was when shooting by the rig.  Over there, I just made sure to slow down the shutter a bit to give me a little extra light, and then made sure to crank it back up when I returned to the middle of the floor.

So quick review.  Indoor events have their pros:  usually consistent lighting so you can lock in settings and then focus on the job.  The downside, usually the lighting is very poor and you'll need to pull out all the stops to get a sufficient shutter speed.  Go through the steps I've outlined above -- survey the room, take test images, dial it in with your meter, and then get shooting.  Make sure often review your results and adjust accordingly.

If you like what you've read, please share.  Feel free to post some content suggestions below so I know what you're looking for in my next post.  For bookings email shaun@superclearyphoto.com.  And as always, follow @supercleary on instagram and SuperClearyPhoto on Facebook.

Chris Spealler hitting a 405lb deadlift - Nikon D4, Sigma 120-300, ISO 8000