Behind the Scenes: On Assignment for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
by Michael Clark, production stills by Leslie Alsheimer

Portfolio: Adobe Lightroom | Adobe Lightroom Digital Workflow

In late April 2006, Michael shot an assignment for Adobe Lightroom - producing demo images for the new software which was released in late February 2007. The images are also featured in the User Guide, which is included with the software, as well as in the features tour on the Adobe Lightroom website.

The assignment was to create portfolio quality images of a brand of "extreme" mountain biking known as freeriding or downhilling. For the mountain bikers this would involve a serious amount of risk as is evident by the images. There are few adventure sports that I consider extreme, but this one certainly qualifies. The riders would be jumping off 35-foot cliffs onto slickrock which leaves little room for error. Luckily, there were only a few small crashes and the riders survived the photo shoot relatively unscathed. You can check out a sampling of the images by clicking on the Portfolio: Adobe Lightroom link above.

Everything was shot digitally with Nikon cameras and lenses - and we shot in RAW so that the software could be demonstrated with these images. In fact, if you attended a demonstration of Lightroom in the past year there is a good chance you were looking at these images.

In preparing for this assignment the objective was to have as much varied terrain as possible - with some very photogenic scenery, bright colors and cloudless blue skies. Moab, Utah was the obvious choice for its amazing and varied terrain. Also, with this type of mountain biking, specifically the big jumps, a windless day is a must since even a small gust of wind can throw a rider off their intended trajectory with possibly disastrous results. The weather turned out to be a much harder factor to predict but we got lucky and the day we picked months in advance turned out to be the only calm, clear blue sky day that entire week.

Shooting began the night before our scheduled shoot - I was trying to get more variety and played with some blur shots that would be quite a bit different than any of the other images we would be producing the following day. The set up for these images was a little odd. We had a camera mounted on the bike, my assistant had one of my Dyna-Lite Uni400jr strobes with a slight warming gel on it and I had the main camera - all of which were triggered with a Pocket Wizard radio transmitter on the main camera. Once we got the set up dialed, my assistant and I ran behind the cyclist on a singletrack trail and shot as many frames as we could. If someone had walked up on the scene it might have looked pretty comical but right away we were getting some pretty unique images. And thankfully since we were shooting digital we could judge when we had the image we wanted. We shot until an hour after sunset, until it was almost too dark to see. My assistant, Leslie Alsheimer, was a trooper and had to do some fancy footwork running next to the singletrack trail over very rough terrain.

The next morning, we started at 4 AM in the dark so we could get out to Bartlett Wash just as the sun was rising. Our objective was to get some silhouettes of the riders as the sun came up then move onto the Mushroom, which is a mushroom-shaped rock jutting out from the slickrock mesa. It is a world-famous mountain biking test piece involving a 35-foot jump onto slickrock. And it certainly turned out to be a particularly good day for Ed Strang who had never jumped off the Mushroom. After warming up on smaller cliff jumps he gave the Mushroom a go and in pure Ed style nailed it no problem. I haven't seen him smile that big in a long time! Ryon Reed and Ed took turns on the Mushroom and each went off it at least five times.

Between each jump, I spoke with the riders and we set up shots from different angles. Since there is so much risk involved in this jump, I wanted to maximize the different angles and number of images I could get on each go and not work the riders too hard. Landing on rock after jumping off a 35-foot cliff, even on the incredible mountain bikes they were riding, is rather hard on the body and as we needed to continue shooting the rest of the day I didn't want to push it too hard.

Earlier that morning, before we started shooting I had a huddle with the riders. I told them, "If you don't know for sure, 150%, that you can do anything I ask you to do then don't do it." Communication was key. In some instances the riders would let me know about a trick or another jump close by they thought would look good and they could pull off no problem. That led to images I hadn't even though about. I think I can safely say George Jardine, the Lightroom Product Manager from Adobe, was blown away by the ability of these riders.

After a full morning at Bartlett Wash, we got back in the cars, grabbed some lunch and moved up into the La Sal mountains for our second location which was a huge fin of rock rising above the surrounding forest. I had scouted the area the day before and found a location on the opposite hillside that gave me super clean backgrounds as well as an incredible vista with Castleton Valley and Castleton Spire in the background.

For the riders, it wasn't a particularly difficult rock fin to descend, so a few of the riders rode wheelies down it and generally just had a ball, save for the fact that they had to push their bikes back up the fin each time. By late afternoon everyone was so beat that it became obvious we needed to start wrapping up. We sat down for beers and a some snacks, shot a few portraits and found the riders practically dozing off.

In all, we shot over 30 GB of images - most with a 12.4 MP Nikon D2x. That adds up to well over 3,000 images shot in a 24 hour period. I can't say I have ever shot that many images in such a short time on any other assignment. Editing and working up those images took me the better part of a week - using the then Beta 2.0 version of Lightroom. As I hadn't used the software that much before the assignment, George was gracious enough to give me a personal tutorial so I could work up the images in Lightroom. And as I discovered, Lightroom is a fantastic and very intuitive RAW processing and image editing application. And in fact it is now a central part of my digital workflow.

In July, I was informed that the images I had produced for this assignment were chosen by the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) for the 2006 Best Of issue of the ASMP Bulletin which was published later that fall. And one of my images of Ryon Reed jumping off the Mushroom formation at Bartlett Wash graced the cover of that issue as well. It was very gratifying to see those images honored and it was an honor to be included among my peers who were also featured in that issue of the ASMP Bulletin.

ASMP also published the extended interview for the Bulletin on their website along with several other images from the Adobe Lightroom assignment. If you like to read that interview you can see it here.

I'd like to say thanks again to the riders including Ryon Reed, Ed Strang and Kathy Parent for all of your hard work and to my assistant Leslie Alsheimer, as well as to George Jardine of Adobe. It was an exhausting 24 hours of work but I think we all had quite a bit of fun. It was a pleasure working with Adobe on this project and I cannot forget to mention how much creative freedom Adobe allowed me with the shoot. And above and beyond that, I found Adobe had a great respect for photographers and the work they produce which was evident in every aspect of producing this assignment.