I attended my first ever live auction today. It’s a hobby of my dad’s and he invited me to go to one with a bunch of golf equipment. I like golf and really enjoy spending a day with my dad, so I went. I had a good time – a live auction is a one-of-a-kind event (the noise, excitement and tons of people at an all-day thing, on a work day, spending money… hmmmm… maybe I should have talked to more folks and figure out how to make that happen). I also found a great new iron set at a steal of a price.

Before I was even home I decided that I’d surpass the typical subjects of the photo marathon (my kids) and shoot these instead. It was an interesting challenge – I had to deal with all the chrome on the clubs and didn’t want to get any of the bag in the shot – I wanted to keep in minimalist.

I shot it with two Canon speedlites (a 580EXII and 430EX to be specific) – one with an 8 inch snoot (a snoot is a tube-like device you put on a flash to keep the light narrow and restricted), camera right and above, pointing down at the clubs. The other speedlite was camera left, also snooted, and pointed at the black muslin background. It had a red gel (a gel is essentially a red piece of transparent plastic).

Camera specs were: Canon 40D, 24-70L 2.8 lens at 45mm, f3.5, 1/250 sec. I used a large aperature to blur out the background (the red light was shining on a black cloth and I didn’t want any distinct wrinkles). After looking at the picture full screen, I might have raised it up a bit, perhaps to around 8 to get all the clubs more in focus. Even with that, though, I really like the shot.

As is always the case, you can check out all our photo marathon pictures at the Flickr group here.