Maties Paralympics Medal Winners

Continuing in my current series of photos on Athletes I recently took photos of the Maties Medal Winners at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Group photos can be quite difficult if you want a soft enveloping light. If you dont have a huge 2m parabolic dish the solution can be quite simple. I use a 1.8 m scrim diffuser that I place before two 500W lights. I raise this light to about waist height. I make sure to get a bit of hair light by placing two 300W strobes to the sides of the group, giving them a bit of highlight from the back. To get a group together for a final photo is of course quite difficult. If you are not working with professional models that chances that all three people will have a good face at the same time decreases exponentially. In the end you will just need to take quite a few photos and do some photoshop if it needs it. I did minimal photoshop in this image though. I just darkened the sky and the background with a bit of burning. I did include a photoshop fault in this image. Check if you can see it.

Athletes Take 1

i am currently doing a series of photos about the athletes from my local university. I started with the sprinter, who, big bonus was a reasonably attractive fellow (Like Jane Bown's Editor said to her, "make sure its a good looking turnip"). The lighting for it was quick and easy to do. I used two 500W strobes placed about 1.5 meter from him on either side. the Strobes were on backlight stands to bring the lights down low so that i could get the light in under him when he is in the Ready position. I also used a reflector to try and get a little bit of light into his face so thåt the shadow that appeared on his face became slightly lighter. I used 1/200th and an Fstop of F22 to compensate for the light and make sure the darkground will be dark as this was shot in broad daylight.

In post production I to take some random guys that was standing in the background out. There was also a big lighting pole that showed up that I also had to remove. Final Result... not too shitty.