Gauntlet: Shooting in the Dark

By Gary Fong
Photographer: Kevin Vandivier, www.kevinv.com
Click photo to enlarge
 
Figure 1
 
Sometimes, pictures are made, not found. Mixed light, timing, and the minds eye all come together to produce images that cause a viewer to ask, “how did he do that?”
 
For the editor, that’s always a good question to have in the mind of the viewer…cause it stops the reader dead in his tracks, holding the eyes on the page. Editors are always seeking ways to hold the reader’s attention. Good access into the page with art that is unique or causes readers to stop and ponder is a desired quality.
 
Kevin Vandivier’s long career as a photo editor, a photographer, a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none, uses his conceptual mindset to develop images that will stop readers.
 
 
Now for the Nit Picking
 
The scene is early evening, under failing light, and calm atmosphere.  Kevin’s ambient exposure is 1/3 at f/5.6.  If he shot the fly fisherman casting with a slow shutter speed, there would be movement in the fly rod and line. It’s such a small element of the image, the rod and line may not show up in the image at all.
 
His solution is to use an off camera strobe to illuminate the fisherman, the rod, and the fly line whipping over the still waters.  It’s the strobe light that makes movement frozen.  The duration of the strobe light is about 1/1500.  At that speed, almost anything would be frozen.
 
The combination of the strobe and the ambient light, allows Kevin to control the overall exposure and freeze the motion of subject at the same instant.
 
However, I wish the fisherman were less centric to the frame…but I can forgive him.  After all, shooting under available darkness is like shooting blind. He’s fortunate to have captured the fisherman anywhere in his viewfinder at all.  What he couldn’t see, he got….including a few mosquito bites.