Saturday, December 01, 2007

Tennis playmaker

Last but certainly not least, Pueblo County High School’s Joey Patti is the playmaker for boys tennis in 2007.

I told Joey to wear his varsity uniform and bring his racquets and a can or two of balls to the studio. Joey was happy to honor my request even though he didn’t seem real sure of what kind of photo we were going to do.

Before he showed up I spent a little time getting things ready. I found a green gel that I could use to throw some color on the background. The school’s colors are green and gold so I figured the green gel would be the best color to go with.

I got the lights set up. Then I asked Joey for his racquet and one of the better looking tennis balls that he brought with him. Joey watched as I grabbed a couple of zip ties, zipped them together, and to the face of Joey’s racquet. In hindsight I think I would use some string or fishing line to do this the next time. It was just too much work to remove the zip tie from the image with the help of Photoshop.

After we got everything set I started to photograph Joey. When I use the SB-800s in the studio it is a bit more difficult because the strobes don’t have modeling lights. What we did was set up the camera on a tripod, then I would pre-focus on Joey and turn off the overhead lights to shoot the photo. I coached Joey with, “Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move, don’t move.” He did a great job and made my job easy.

Thanks Joey.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

As usual, Kiss works. Keep it simple. This is really good. One I'll lodge at the back of my mind for future reference! Thanks

Bryan said...

Bruce, I am with you. If things get too complicated I tend to forget what I am doing, and that's not a good thing. ha!