So it was the Fat Face high jump event at our local wakeboarding lake two weekends ago.  I got to the lake late afternoon after the qualifying had already taken place and everyone was waiting around for the main event.  It was being filmed by Fat Face for promotional reasons and they had quite a bit of pyrotechnics to play with.  For this reason they wanted to postpone the final until it got dark; about 10:00pm at this time of year.  I was positioned next to another photographer and also one of the film cameras and no-one really knew what was going to happen in terms of light; it was almost pitch black then.  The first boarder came round and before he hit the jump a few gas flames illuminated the sky but too early and not nearly enough to illuminate the rider in-flight, even despite the multiple flash guns firing.  Us photographers looked at our camera backs and then at each other; sure enough faint and hazy shots which were useless.  The video guy could get nothing as well... so all-in-all it was a bit of a cock-up.  After a couple more riders hit the jump I gave-up and resorted to long exposures from the side angle, but with no tripod.  This shot being one of the better ones; the rider is first illuminated by my flash just off the ramp and later illuminated by another photographers flash just above the bar.  A couple more of these to come in the next few days.