Behind The Lens With James Lissimore Presented By Fox Racing Canada

Shooting At Sunset

This is going to be a short Behind the Lens this week – I’m just packing for a trip to the BC interior, starting tomorrow. It got me thinking though about a fun shoot we did last year in Kamloops, with Shawn Maffenbeier, so I thought I’d share a quick write-up about it.

It’s not like it’s surprising to say that last year was a weird year. Usually, for the spring cover, you’d end up using something shot from down south but with travel being so logistically difficult, I was sticking to BC all last spring. Luckily, my buddy Maff had recently switched back to the MX101 Yamaha team that he won the 2017 250 National title with and he had also decided to stay in BC and train all winter, so it made sense to put him on the cover, and I could drive up to Kamloops to shoot it. 

Parts shortages meant that the date kept getting pushed back, but as the deadline for the magazine loomed, I was able to make the trip up to get the shot. It was still too early in the year to shoot out at the Whispering Pines track but there’s a gravel pit east of town that I actually shot as part of a RacerXCanada feature way back in 2007 that we were able to shoot at. Shawn was using it as a practice track so it made sense. The weather ended up being perfect and we got there just before dusk to shoot right in that good sunset light. There’s something about the desert landscape in Kamloops that really makes for nice, dramatic light at the beginning and end of the day that is so good to shoot in. 

It was my first chance to try out a new Godox battery-powered flash that worked really well. With the battery pack self-contained in the flash head, it was easy to move it around as we worked different spots on the hill. In the end, we got a couple of great shots and this one ended up making the cover.

The technical specs were: 1/800 shutter, F4, iso 1000, to underexpose the background a bit and bring out that sunset color on the mountains behind Shawn, with my flash at ½ power to illuminate him. Shot with my 70-200mm lens at 135mm.