Hypersync Ice Climbing

Earlier this year, I worked with professional ice climber Dawn Glanc to create another set of lit ice climbing images in the Ouray Ice Park. This time around, I wanted to experiment with Hypersync strobe techniques. Hypersync is a technique that allows us to sync strobes at shutter speeds above the normal 1/250th flash sync speed, and in some cases all the way up to 1/8,000th second shutter speeds. Hypersync is only possible when using the PocketWizard ControlTL transceivers, namely the Mini TT1 and Flex TT5 wireless transceivers, and a compatible strobe system. For this shoot I used the 1,100 Watt/Second Elinchrom Ranger RX Speed AS battery-powered strobe along with the Ranger S flash heads and a high-performance reflector. This setup allowed me to shoot at a 1/1,000th second shutter speed and light up the 200-foot deep gorge in the middle of the day. For the full story behind the scenes on this portfolio shoot head over to the Elinchrom blog where they have published a full article and a number of images.

My thanks to Dawn Glanc and her sister Kristie for all their hard work on this photo shoot. Below are a few other images from this shoot. Check out my forthcoming Spring 2015 Newsletter for a more in-depth article about this portfolio shoot.