Guestblog Richard Sterkenburg

Today it’s time for Richard Sterkenburg.
I absolutely loved the shot he tweeted me for the critique day so I invited Richard also over to the blog to tell a bit more about the shot, so ladies and gents…. here is Richard.

It’s my first time writing for a guest blog. Not a problem at all, but writing it down in English makes it for a Dutch guy a bit harder. Let’s give it a go!

A while ago I was asked by a professional athlete to shoot some portraits of her to thank het sponsor. This was a great opportunity for me, cause I love to shoot sports, especially on location and giving it a commercial looking concept. So we started out talking and sketching the possibility’s there were and I came to the idea to make a series out of three photo’s. Continue reading as I explain what we did for the shot.

As you can see, we went on location and found a piece of track that was just right for our shoot. I made this image out of several ones and later combined them together in Photoshop, so the brand logo would fit just right. For this photo I used a 750w/s flash unit far behind the athlete on the right, so it would cast a long shadow over the track. This was my main light. I placed another 750w/s flash unit, but now on the left side to give the athlete a little rim light a make her really com out of the shadow. Only this flash was 2 stops under. After some test shots I realized I needed the athlete to have a shape like the brand logo, because this shape was going to be her shadow. So as we continued shooting I had the right shot to fit the image and the brand logo.

With the second photo I wanted to look the athlete like she totally was in her element. A pretty close portrait of her sitting and waiting for the race to begin. Only the word “set” had to be called and then the big bang to victory. At this moment the athlete is fully focused at the race and her face should by drawn by concentration, but because the photo was ment to thank her sponsor, I asked her to look friendly, but confident to win. I came to realize I missed something so I decided to move the set to a place on the track were we could use the wind we had that day. To give the photo a little dynamic touch we let the wind play with her hair so it gave that friendly and dynamic look.

The main light in this photo was a 40x60cm softbox placed camera left about 2 feet above the athlete. This light gave the athlete a soft shadow casting around her face. I added two rim lights behind the athlete to give her body and hair that edgy look and make her body really pop out of the black background. To make the background as dark as possible I took out most of the ambient light and let my flashes do the lighting.

The last photo I had the idea to make her look ambitious, motivated, but mostly dreaming about herself to be the best athlete at a high professional level. She is standing on the track holding her spikes in her hand, looking up the air and thinking about all the great things she can achieve.

When setting up lights and compositing the image I decided to set my camera almost 3 stops under ambient light and only light her face and upper body with a small 30x40cm softbox. This way she really popped out of the background and gave her this ambitious, dramatic look. While shooting this assignment I had my assistant filming it and I made a short BTS video out of it. You can also check this out by clicking the next link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiWjNt4uBX0

That’s it, for now!
Hope you like it and please leave some comments.

Richard Sterkenburg
Pixel Fotografie
www.pixel-fotografie.nl