Yo-yo Photographyedit this page

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If you are thinking of photographing yo-yos or yo-yo tricks, here are a few things to consider, when taking pictures. Most of the following applies to still photography as well as to video.

Contents 1 Photographing Tricks 1.1 Lighting and background 1.2 Motion 2 Photographing Yo-yos

[edit] Photographing Tricks

[edit] Lighting and background

When documenting a trick, it is imperative, that the moves are recognizable. As the trick description usually depends on hands, the string and the yo-yo, these three things must be well visible. A good method to achieve this is to use bright colors with string and yo-yo and photograph everything in front of a darker background. Wearing dark clothes can help with this as well. It does not have to be all black, but the resulting contrast should clearly allow the string and yo-yo to stand out.

Lighting can also enhance contrast. Trick photography works best with a light source, that illuminates the player frontally, like a flashlight. This way no shadow can fall on the string keeping all portions of it visible.

Image 1: Not enough contrast	‎A bad example is Image 1, which uses a string that is too close to the skin color. In the right lighting conditions this pink string stands out well against most backgrounds, but against the hand the contrast is poor.
Image 2: Good contrast	Image 2 shows the same thing with a white string, which works well under these conditions. Note that the background is distracting. An evenly colored dark background would be better. The image still highlights the yo-yo and the string well, because of the low depth of field, which makes the background fuzzy and focuses the viewer's attention on the yo-yo.
Image 3: Extreme example ‎	Image 3 shows an extreme example in which even the hands were covered with black gloves in order to make the rest stand out. When we shot this, the only black gloves we could find were thick wooly ones. Made playing a real challenge. :-)

[edit] Motion

Photographing a single hold is quite easy, as the player can usually pause while the photographer can set up focusing, exposure, proper framing, and so on. Capturing motion can be much much harder. You can usually only get one shot during a move which makes it difficult to hit just the right millisecond where something crucial is happening. Modern cameras can usually take several pictures in series, but, depending on the camera, this is often limited to something between five to ten exposures per second. Makes it easier to get lucky, but still not that easy.

Enter the video camera. Video is ideal for tecching and demontrating yo-yo tricks. Free video hosting sites like YouTube or Yoyoing.com have made it easy for palyers to demontrate tricks to players around the world. The things that have been said before about contrast and background hold for video as well. The following is a good example.

Video: Yo-yo Trick Spirit Bomb URL http://youtube.com/watch?v=cxnlJCzwy7w Comment Nice tutorial showing the trick from two angles. Also a good example of how a video can look, if you choose the right clothing and backdrop, i.e. black.

Recently it has become possible to easily take still photos of movement. Since the advent of HD television, HD camcorders have become quite affordable. These can shoot up to sixty frames per second. The following series has been shot at 720p60. The frames (about every third one) have then been captured as 1280x720 Jpegs and then been cropped and scaled down. Shutter speed was 1/500, so the movements were only slightly blurred. This series of pictures demonstrates the potential of the technology.

In order to achieve shutter speeds of 1/500, lighting has to be very good. So you need either bright daylight or a very powerful studio lamp.

[edit] Photographing Yo-yos

Photographing yo-yos is sustantially easier than photographing tricks, however some things should be kept in mind.

Hmmmm...	This picture shows two basic problems, framing and contrast. The yo-yo only fills a small part of the picture. A cropped picture would have sufficed. Worst of all, the contrast is abysmal. A white yo-yo in front of a white background simply is not a good idea.
Flash is bad	One thing to remember is, that ‎a flash (at least a flash mounted close to the lens) eliminates all depth perception, as there are no shadows. It is always better to use a natural light source.
Reflection	‎If you must use a flash, make sure there are no reflecting surfaces as in this example.
White balance	‎Sice the advent of digital cameras, it is no longer necessary to carry a wide array of filters to achieve accurate colours. Make sure the white balance on your camera is set correctly. The string in this picture should be white. Also, the colours of the yo-yos are far from their original tones.
Depth of field	‎Here almost everything is right. Unfortunately some of the content is not in focus. This is due to the very low depth of field provided by the 1.8 aperture. The focal plane goes through the hub of the blue yo-yo. Sometimes this is used as a stylistic element, but in this picture it is just a bit overdone.
All right	‎Finally, a good example. The background provides sufficient contrast, the lighting is good, we have natural colours, and depth of field is satisfactory.