ELB 400 Archives

The Blue Room is an epic Speedride through a natural ice tunnel

Jan 5, 2017 by John Aldred 3 Comments

Speed riding is a terrifying combination of freestyle skiing and paragliding. Described by those who participate as “staggeringly difficult and dangerous as hell“, it’s very impressive to watch. When Swiss speedriding pioneer and Olympic snowboarding medalist, Ueli Kestenholz discovered a massive natural ice tunnel, he knew he had to go through it. So, he contacted photographer Marc Weiler.

An insane location, 3,000m (around 10,000ft) above sea level in the snow and ice. The shoot presented a rather unique set of challenges for Marc. He needed to pack as light as possible, but have plenty of power and speed to be able to capture both inside the tunnel with the outside sky. With a pack that weighed 20kg, it can’t have been easy, but well worth it from looking at the results.

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This surfer photographed under Norway’s northen lights is spectacular

Dec 19, 2016 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

Surfing has become wildly popular since it started to see a major revival in the 1960s. Along with the sport, came photographers. Things have come a long way since the days of photographers like LeRoy Grannis. But, we get to a point where styles and ideas become recycled. It happens with most genres of photography, though. Once it becomes saturated, it’s often difficult to innovate.

Some photographers, however, want to push the boundaries and try something genuinely new. Such is the case with photographers Emil Sollie & Mats Grimsæth. Their mission was to photograph Australian surfing champ, Mick Fanning performing under Norway’s Northern Lights.

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This photographer lit a biker doing stunts with an Elinchrom strobe mounted to a drone

Nov 21, 2016 by John Aldred 4 Comments

When Nikon put a couple of SB-5000 speedlights on a drone for their launch of the D500, I was pretty impressed. I was also a little jealous. It was something I’d wanted to try myself, but didn’t have access to the kind of drones I’d need to lift them. Now, photographer David Robinson has upped the stakes by strapping an Elinchrom ELB 400 strobe to an octocopter.

Such a rig has the inherent advantage of being far higher than light stands could ever go. It’s probably the most reliable method of trying to simulate bright daylight with hard edged parallel shadows. Being a drone, it also has the advantage of being able to follow a moving subject. In this case, that moving subject is pro mountain biker Matt Jones.

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I am photographing 1,200 pilgrims, here are the first 200

Jul 14, 2016 by Matt Palace 1 Comment

My name is Matt Palace and I intend to photograph 1,200 pilgrims. “1200 Pilgrims” is a personal project carried out with the intention of photographing 1,200 Pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain. Individuals from around the world walked this 800km trail over the course of 30 days, as a spiritual retreat.

The aim of this experiment was to discover if I, as an amateur photographer, could improve my workflow. I was curious to know whether the use of a professional flash head could influence the quality of my pictures compared to my previous work.

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