Artist’s Bio
Adrian Valenzuela’s original goal was to become involved in music videos and television commercial production. As a Cinematography major at Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Valenzuela discovered an affinity for working with cameras and lighting, in particular. Instead of moving to Los Angeles to shoot commercials, he remained in the Bay Area and began to earnestly work on stills. “I started to take what I had learned about cinematography and applied it to still photography,” he explains.

Valenzuela is now shooting roller derby teams all over California. “At first I didn’t know what I was getting into,” he says. “I brought a bunch of lights, but I quickly found out a lot of these older rinks are not up to the proper electrical code. Getting power is often a problem. The first one I shot I had to have one light way up by the DJ booth. It was very difficult, but it enabled me to get some very dramatic lighting. I now set up different zones around the whole track. This way I can move around the track and get completely different shots. The girls know me now, and before the game, they’ll go out and run power for me. It’s all rigged up for me when I show up,” he laughs. His many contacts across the league are suggesting he publish a book of his roller derby photos. “By the end of this year I should have enough portrait work to combine with the action shots,” he says.

Why I needed the Pro-8Air for this shot:
Valenzuela’s main camera body is a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. A Profoto Pro-8a is used to power his lights. “What I like about the Profoto gear is it recycles incredibly fast. For the roller derby games, you have to have the ability to shoot quickly because different things happen always. There’s ten girls on the track at the same time, and things are going on all over. If your lights aren’t ready, you’re going to miss shots. I’ve had it turned up to seven and it still doesn’t slow down at all. You can’t have the lights right up at the track. You have to have them farther away, so you have to have a lot of power turned up, and they still don’t stop. They recycle very fast,” he says. “I also use an old Sekonic Cinema light meter and PocketWizard Plus II’s to fire my strobes,” he adds.