In the summer of 2015, I had the opportunity to work with Sweetgrass Productions on 'Darklight', which was a short film on riding at night. They hired me to help co-produce and photograph the shoot which involved scouting out the best accessible terrain that would illuminate well with our lighting in dramatic ways, be accessible for the crew and most importantly be amazing for the riders to shred.
The goal in this project was to be as colorful as possible, in a meaningful way. The grey soil in this part of Utah responded well to cyan and magenta light and it offered us an opportunity to separate Matty's dust trail from the spine. It took most of the night to tune the angles of light so we could keep the slope blue and not have the magenta appear until his roost dust trail exploded behind him.
Photographically, this entire shoot was challenging for me as I had to shoot in a cinematic lighting scenario. It is not as bright as using strobes and it can make it hard to stop the riders. Fortunately, today’s cameras can handle low light well and I resorted to always being on tripod and having a set of fast prime lenses on set that offer better access to shutter speed while keeping ISO lower.
The lighting crew were always checking in with me and trying to pump in as much light as possible. To the naked eye, it appeared amazingly bright, but once you combine the fast paced action of mountain biking, it was a constant challenge.