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Joco's fury | Skyports
by: Matt
posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 in Photographers  Jaco Fourie
I've seen adverts for Elinchrom Skyports and until recently, hadn't seen images from this system of transmitters until I ran into Jaco Fourie, South African photographer. Along with his wife Daleen, they are producing some amazing imagery that I felt needed to be seen here on Flashflavor. I have been keeping an eye on the Flashflavor flickr group and noticed his stuff along the way. His images are very romantic and his compositions are all very pleasing to look at! Not yet contributing to the Flashflavor Flickr Pool, please drop a few wedding shots off there! Jaco writes: Don't you just love it when it all comes together? This image was a bit of luck on the one side. I had the lights set-up on the dance floor as I normally do. I like to use off camera flash on the dance floor and have them pointing at each other to get some cross lighting. This creates a more 3D look. I kept on moving around on the dance floor and decided to move the 2 lights to the same side pointing at me. As luck would have it the DJ blew some smoke on the dance floor when the father and the bride started to do their dance. The groom and his mother joined them and I saw that they were moving in a circle on the floor. I lifted the camera and waited for the moment when both the couples where in front of my lights. I did fire off a couple of shots just to make sure I had it. The smoke added some real drama to the image. I think that off camera flash adds so much more drama to an image. I first started to experiment with it when I got my first D70. Using the Nikon creative light system I was able to create great images non wedding related but found it a bit limiting at weddings as you got unpredictable results with miss fires. So I left it there. Then I discovered the e-bay triggers and started to play with them as the Pocket Wizards are very expensive here in South Africa. I still had some problems with miss firing using those triggers. Then I found the FlashFlavor site and was amazed with the work Matt, Ed Pingol, DQ Studio and Sol Tamargo were doing with off camera flash. I upgraded to the Skyport radio triggers and the rest is history. Now we are only limited by our imagination. I have always been a big fan of video light photography. People like Jerry Ghionis had a big influence in my style of photography. But now off camera flash has added another dimension to our work. Thanks Matt for creating this blog and inspiring us to be better at what we do. Viva FlashFlavor. ah_3911.jpg
Nikon D3 | F8 | 1/125 | ISO | Sigma 12-24mm
Here is another:
el_3829.jpg
Shot was done with 2 SB-800 and 1 video light in total darkness. Camera WB was set to tungsten, that is why the flash is blue. We used the video light to light the couple from the front. 1 SB-800 was pointing at the steel work and the other pointing at the couple. Both Speedlights where behind the couple. Nikon D3 ISO 2000 F-stop F4.8 Shutter 1/13 Thank you for making inspiring images for us to see! Check a look at Jaco's website if you need some inspiration this week: Jaco has also taken his time to give us a tutorial and a review on the skyport. Check his handy work out: Here is a link to his blog post where he has a few more video tutorials on the Skyports. Thanks Jaco! Any questions for Jaco on this system? I'm curious to see if anybody else has been using / experiencing good results with skyports? Cheers! matt
6 comments for "Joco's fury | Skyports"
matt say's

5 minutes to warm up? Really? Why is that?
April 24th, 2008 3:59 pm

I have had the Skyports for about a month now and absolutely LOVE them! Mine seem to take about 3-5 minute to get sync'd up (or maybe just warmed up), but once they are going- LOOK OUT! They are so simple and all of my off-camera work is done with these.
April 24th, 2008 3:46 pm
tom say's

i've been using skyports for a few months now and am very impressed, 100% fire rate and they're so compact! imo pocket wizards are unwieldy in comparison.
April 24th, 2008 10:40 am
matt say's

I love the south African accent! Thank you Jaco for taking the time for the demonstrations with your setup... I am really loving your shot on the bridge too, you dropped a ton of thinking power on making that baby perfect, well done amigo! Cheers! mateo
April 21st, 2008 1:39 pm
David W say's

Nice to see some info on the skyports. I'm thinking about buying some myself since my ebay-triggers are next to useless for me. I might wait for the Radiopopper jr, it's really hard to decide.
April 17th, 2008 6:12 pm
Dave Wagner say's

I have the Skyports as well. As an amateur photog on a budget, I've been very very pleased with these. I had the ebay triggers before and they were nothing but trouble. The skyports have been extremely reliable and easy to use.
April 17th, 2008 2:25 pm
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