Capture dramatic sports action with tips from Sports POTY Finn O’Hara
Finn O’Hara submitted his photograph, titled Mikaël Kingsbury, Olympic Freestyle Skier (see next page), to the prestigious International Photography Awards, an annual competition that attracts entries from top professionals, amateurs and students worldwide. His skier photograph was originally a commission from a client; however, Finn saw its potential and decided to follow his instincts. “I took it another step further by creating an image that I couldn’t take during the pandemic. I had imagined what it would be like if we had a skier flying through a cloud of coloured smoke, and how incredible that would look,” says Finn.
Constrained by the pandemic, time and money, he decided to photograph skier Mikaël Kingsbury in a studio in Canada where he was based. The photographer’s point of view is crucial to showcasing movement in sport and action photography. “The skier is on his back on a waist-high platform so he can articulate his skis, poles and body. I’m on a 12ft-high platform above him, shooting directly down. He’s looking at a monitor that shows him what I’m shooting so that he can get his body positioning correct,” says Finn.
Finn used a PhaseOne IQ3 100MP camera with a Schneider Kreuznach LS 55mm lens to capture the shot, adjusting his camera settings to 100 ISO, f/11 and setting the shutter speed to 1/320 sec. The combination of aperture and a fast shutter speed enabled him to freeze the movement. Since the photo was taken in a studio, artificial lighting played a big role in creating the shot.
“Our lighting system is powered by five ProPhoto Pro-10 power packs. I took shots of the mountains to give the skier context, and then photographed green smoke from several smoke bombs but turned them red in post,” Finn explains. In post-production, he worked closely with a retoucher to seamlessly combine the elements he had captured in the camera into one photograph.
