T is for Tennis

As I damaged my shoulder playing tennis in Florida two weeks ago, I'm off the courts for at least a month, so I thought a tennis blip would be appropriate. I'd seen serves at Wimbledon coverage where the white line-chalk on the ball exploded off the ball on the serve.

So two Stobeam flash heads aimed in from behind, to backlight the flour, and give an effective 1/6000th sec shutter speed, which will fire at 6 frames per second, a racket, ball, and a bowl of flour was all I needed. And about 300 attempts to get it about right! After each attempt, I had to re-dust the ball with flour. The most difficult part - trying to set the camera firing, and keep the racket head remotely in focus, the timing to get the flash firing at the right moment - plenty of shots too early and too late (even at 6fps).

And a whole lot of files to delete! I think I kept four or five!