... well, on a skating rink.
[Preamble]
About 9 years ago, I've started photographing in very challenging
conditions: dancers on a dimly-lit dance floor. That's when I had to
develop certain (new for me) approaches and tricks in the procedure.
And many of you have seen Larry and me discussing some of those.
I've given several workshops on photographing dancers and dancing so that
you would appear well on photographs, where some of the discussed topics
were related to the low-light tricks.
I should mention how great it feels after all that, to photograph in
bright-light conditions, where you can have much larger latitude in your
settings (i.e. choose what to bump up: aperture, speed, dial down ISO,
...)
[/preamble]
Now, here is the main story.
Recently, I've got new challenging conditions.
About 11 months or so ago, I've started photographing people on a skating
rink. Even though the light is usually not as low, I've found that it is
the condition that is also rather challenging.
The main challenges are with relatively wide dynamic range and with the
proper color balance.
1. The ice, and white sides of the scating rink produce a relatively
bright background. This makes it easy to underexpose the
skaters. And the ice doesn't seem to work well as a reflector, i.e. I have
to do "fill-in" in post for the faces.
2. The color gamma of the lights, and I am still trying to
understand this, - is somewhat strange. If I am photographing on AWB, I am
getting some color cast that I am having problems to describe. It is
yellowish (or greenish?), or at least it seems that way to me.
I suspect it originates from the combination of lights used in the arena.
And I am yet to determine (I keep forgetting to look carefully) what types
of lights (and accordingly, their temperature) they are using.
I am guessing it might be due to the mixed temperatures of light, or a
combination of the light temperature with the whiteness of the ice...
Maybe I am not diagnosing it correctly yet, - I am still thinking about
it.
And I've observed a similar effect on another skating rink, in Austin.
If anybody has had experience with photographing on skating rinks, I'd
appreciate your tips and thoughts.
Thanks,
Igor
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