Advanced Techniques: Blending

I went to the skating rink to take my images of blending. The roller derby is the perfect place for this type of image. The CoMo Derby Dame team is absolutely amazing. These women from extremely different backgrounds meet under the banner of womanhood and empowerment. Watching them compete is interesting. In general, I could appreciate their attitude about life and the bond they’ve created among themselves. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do for this assignment after an experiment at the roller rink during my bounce flash assignment.

I decided that instead of moving the camera to create the feel of motion that this technique allows, I decided to move myself. I have always loved roller-skating. Since my 13-year-old summers at the Fabulous Palace in St. Louis, I have always loved the dance like style of roller skating. Even now, in graduate school, I go to the rink every other week to work off the stress accumulated at Mizzou. For this image, I put on my skates and got into the derby floor. Skating with the derby ladies was an experience. I almost got knocked off my feet a couple of times, but for the most part, I stayed in front of the pack. I tried a few different techniques where I skating with and in front of the women while they played. With my off camera flash and fixed lens, I skated backwards to get the images I wanted to get.

A big part of Roller derby is about the play of the blockers, who make way for their teammates to score. I wanted to capture their emotion and battles in action. I was really happy with how many of the images turned out. This image in particular was interesting because I captured the “hit” itself and got a great sense of motion. In terms of improvements, I could have used a better white balance. I have no clue what temperature the lights were and changed settings at least 3 times to try and get the best color. The thing I was happy with was the motion in the images. After my shoot, I showed some of the girls my images and they were happy with the motion. One in particular thought it was amazing that I could even take images that didn’t look frozen.

Overall, I enjoyed this assignment a lot. Maybe it was because I was able to combine two things I loved, but I felt a since of accomplishment and look forward to the up coming project.