It’s been a little over more than 5 years since I last took pictures of paintball with Team Heatwave! But it really doesn’t feel like it. Time just melted away. Back then, I started out first with some action shots of the game at the field before doing a series of profile/commercial standard shots (i.e. wrecked Porsche) for the team with whom I’m affiliated.
This round, I thought of doing a series of paintball pictures of the team in action on a jungle warfare setting at the newly opened Werd Training Facility in Bandar Bukit Puchong. A full green jungle camouflaged uniform, complete with furnishings of twigs and shrubs would have been ideal. Well, a ghillie suit would have been awesome! I’m keeping that in mind for another concept with a “wet” theme. Stay tuned!
Unfortunately, the photo shoot did not turn out the way I expected. It was horrible. When I arrived at 9am, conditions were ideal. It was cloudy and the sun was hidden behind voluminous clouds. However, I didn’t manage to shoot until noon when the team was winding down after their games. That was when nature’s largest strobe decided to awake from its slumber and rain down on me.
I was using a bare 580EXII speed light boomed on a C-stand over the subjects for all these shots. Another second bare speed light was at the rear (where applicable) on a light stand. The speed lights were on 1/2 power most of the time, while I vary my ISO to between 100-400 on a 4-stop ND filter to overpower the sun and tame the ambient with 1/125 sec and f/5.0 exposure setting. I wish I had much more powerful studio strobes to kill the ambient but I had to just make do with the little ones. Unfortunately, no BTS shots as I was struggling to get things in order while fire fighting with nature.
I was almost cursing under my breath at the huge discomfort I have to endure while taking these pictures; sweating profusely (it didn’t help that I was wearing specs), high humidity, swarms of mosquitoes (note to self: no bermudas on outdoor shoots!) and the uneven terrain of wet sticky earth. Adding to that, the attempt of squinting at a small LCD on a blazing hot day. Certainly not the way to go for a high budget production with an army of assistants but then again, expectations managed; this was just a personal shoot. So in a way, I’m pleased.
But if given a choice, I would have gone with much more powerful studio strobes, all setup at pre-meditated spots to light a particular planned scene based on story boards. Being the fussy me, these pictures are all a failure. Nevertheless, given the nature and objective of the shoot, at least it provided me a pretty good exercise.
I love the pictures you took. Really appreciate your time and effort. We will be playing there again on the 11.05.2013 @ 9:00am and our CAP3 paintball tournament will be on the 18.05.2013 @ 8:00am
Hi Ray, it’s my pleasure. Glad you like them.