Surf’s up

Stumbled on an opportunity to go watch my friend’s kite-surfing practise on frozen Näsijärvi lake near Tampere.

Grabbed my ol’ faithful Nikkor 80-200/2.8 and head on the ice under a cloudless sky.

Interesting sport. Helmet on, strap yourself into a harness, lift a large sail (kite) into the sky and slide across the frozen lake on a snowboard. Works on summer too as seen here earlier. Professional kite-surfers do big jumps and I met another photographer there doing some strobist work. Can’t remember what strobes he was using, Henkel possibly? Chatted for a while about Nikon stuff. I did felt a brief moment of envy as he was packing a D3 and Nikkor 70-200/2.8 VR.

I faded to the background and worked myself through some feelgood shots so I wouldn’t come back empty handed. Direct afternoon sunlight behind subjects so matrix metering with some AE-locking gave usable exposures.

Had some ideas of the look and shots I wanted but had packed zero lighting equipment with me so I went with the flow and experimenting. I often shoot without hoods to get the flares going. And my second (or third) hand lens didn’t come with one so…

We had couple of hours of daylight and with the dropping light came even harder backlight, spot metering and cranking up the ISO.

Tampere is indeed the industrial capital of Finland as we got pipes in the horizon.