The Multi-block ice sculpting event is in full swing, and will end on Friday, March, 6. During a few visits, I’ve attempted to capture some portraits of the sculptors at work. While it is not challenging to grab a few token shots, it is difficult to create light, spontaneously, as the sculptors are working.

The infrared, remote flash system makes the use of off-camera flash possible, but still I encountered many mis-firings due to orientation and line of sight blockage between master on-camera flash and off-camera slave. However, until that wireless flash system shows up, this will have to do. I use one 580EX flash on my camera, which fires a blast of light which triggers the other off camera flash. This is all done with ETTL metering, and enables me to move around quickly and change positions/distances without worrying about the exposure. A very critical step however is using the FEL (Flash Exposure Lock) button on the Canon 1Ds Mark III, which associates the flash light output with the camera’s meter, providing an exposure based on a tonal value dtermined by you-preferably a medium toned subject in the scene (for example, in the case above, it might be the face of the sculptor instead of the bright ice itself).

These frames show the benefit of created light, which helps considerably when dealing with scenes of high dynamic range often encountered at this event.

These are comparison shots of the same ice sculpture. The first frame shows the work in progress and the second frame shows the detail enhanced when lit at night with colored lights. The multi-block competition, which will conclude on Friday, March 6th, will reveal some spectacular, large sculptures this year. I’ll post some of those upon completion.

I left the world of direct, on-camera flash some years ago, and its a needed step to take for creative and interesting lighting of subjects. In the past, I’ve used Canon’s ST-E2 Infrared Transmitter (Or a Canon 580 serves the same function when set as master), which would trigger off camera flashes through a infrared signal. While this has proved wonderful in many cases, it is also frustrating, and I’ve long desired a wireless trigger instead of Infrared. Infrared requires line of site and an open view between the flash receiver port and the on camera transmitter. Misfiring is common and frustrating when this pathways is broken, which is easily done when working with wide angle lenses close to your subject, flipping the camera to vertical, or quickly altering the orientation of your off camera flash. Soon to come however is the Pocket Wizards new transmitter and receiver (MiniTT1 transmitter and FlexTT5 transceiver) which allows for wireless firing of ETTL flashes! You can read about it on RobGalbraith.com Due to ship in March, I’ll be happy to have more reliability, flexibilty, and quicker working times using this system.

Below is a sample of images taken recently at the World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks. I used a Canon 580 flash behind a soft box, triggered via infrared signal from the Canon 1Ds Mark III. The side-lighting offers a pleasant attention drawing focus and quality of light on the face of the sculptor while keeping the overall exposure low enough to still provide detail in the ice.