Outdoor Track Shoot With Kevin
This was an awesome shoot. It was a hot day, just before sundown. Jordan and I set up our studio lights on the track. We used a battery system which is easily capable of powering four of our strobes. When Kevin arrived, all he needed to do was what he does so well, run. He stretched, warmed up, and made two test passes so that I could adjust my position as Jordan made final adjustments to the strobes. Kevin made around 15 full speed passes. We shot one frame per pass. We nailed the shot!
March 2010 Mailer
Above is our March 2010 mailer. It features a Sports Portrait (or Sportrait) of Austin Dodge. Austin was Skyview high school’s starting quarterback for the 2009 season. He will be playing at Central Washington University next year. I will be shooting another portrait of Austin along with the Skyview Football head coach Steve Kizer next week.
Strobing Indoor Sports
Anyone that has tried to shoot sports at indoor venues knows how hard it is to make good images. The lighting is normally very limited. To overcome the lack of light, photographers use camera bodies with high ISO capabilities and fast lenses. An alternative would be to use a flash. The problem with on-camera flash is that images look very flat and 2 dimensional.
This week I decided to strobe some wrestling and basketball. In the old days, we set up 4 studio strobes at indoor venues. The set-up was a bit time consuming. Jordan and I were short on time so we used two lights (Nikon SB800). Set-up was very quick and we were able to use an ISO of 800 rather than 3200.
Here are 2 example images.
More Skyview Sports Portraits
This post contains more sports portraits (or sportraits as many now call them) from a shoot mentioned in this previous post. While so many think that this is a new style of lighting and several photographers are willing to claim it as their discovery, I was actually using this three point lighting back in the mid ’80s. Who invented it? I don’t know but my inspiration came from the illustrations in the comic books that I read as a kid.
Nicole – Fitness Model/Figure Competitor
In the world of women’s bodybuilding there are several different flavors. There are bodybuilders who work hard to add lots of size and bulk and sculpt their bodies to perfection. There are fitness competitors who compete in incredible acrobatic dance routines. And there are figure competitors who sculpt their bodies with weight training but don’t attempt to bulk up like bodybuilders do.
I had the awesome opportunity to photograph Nicole. Nicole is both a fitness model and a figure competitor. She told me that she is new to figure competitions and would like to get her pro card.
The kinds of images that you are likely to see Nicole in would be running ads or posing as a boxer, etc. We decided to shoot something a little different.
Skyview Profiles (01)
This football season we were fortunate to be able to work with a dozen Skyview High School athletes creating profile portraits (sportraits) for my Storm website. We worked over a two day period shooting at Kiggins Bowl, Skyview’s home stadium. Jordan, my photo assistant (and son), really got a workout as we took 400 lbs of studio equipment on location and had to move it all over the stadium. Congratulations to the Skyview football team for making it all the way to the WIAA 4A Semi-Finals!
Below is the first set of portraits. I’ll present more in a future post.
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My Personal Project – Skyview Sports
Every photographer needs a personal project and I am no different. During the first ten years of my photographic career more than 50% of my assignments were sports action coverage. My clients included daily newspapers on both coasts, national sports magazines, major universities, and the governing bodies of many pro and amateur leagues. I moved on to other types of assignments and my days of sports action seemed well behind me… Then, in 2007, my wife suggested that I shoot some of the games of my son’s high school football team. Skyview High School sports became my personal project. It’s refreshing to be able to shoot without any commercial expectations attached and to give a little bit back to our local community. Below are a few images I’ve shot over the years. If you would like to see more, check out www.storm.davescottphoto.com.
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