Making a SPLASH!

Pueblo South High School swimmer, Samantha Divelbiss.

The most recent round of "Playmaker" portraits was published in the Sunday edition of The Pueblo Chieftain. This was the athletes from the fall sports season. The first of the five was Samantha Divelbiss who was chosen as the playmaker for girls swimming.

I was thrilled that she was selected. I shot her senior portraits this past summer and she is a real joy to work with. She has a lot of fun with the whole photo thing. She comfortable in front of he camera and is very patient when it comes to my making adjustments mid-shoot.

I had this idea in my head and when I told her about it she was pretty excited. I enlisted the help of friend Raenie Pratt and we showed up at the South High School swimming pool just after the boys finished practice and as the Pueblo Swim Club was just starting their practice.

It didn't hurt that Samantha's mom is also the coach for the Pueblo Swim Club team.

I placed three lights strategically on the deck of the pool to light Samantha as I donned swim trunks and walked out from the shallow end holding my D3s camera with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and a pocket wizard remote in the hot shoe.

And yes, I was IN the pool. I needed to get the angle from in the pool to get what I wanted as far as her face.

Samantha had just come from a Cross-Fit workout. If you don't know anything about Cross-Fit, the best way I can describe it is that it is like aerobics on steroids! So she told me her legs were hurting. This was tough for her as when she would get into the starting position on the blocks it really stretched her sore muscles. Lifting her head multiplied the pain even more.

So I made a deal with her. I told her that I would count to three, and on two I wanted her to raise her head and then on three she would get hit with two buckets of water. This seemed to work, but I could tell she was hurting after about a dozen or so photos. So she would take a break every so often to stretch out her legs.

I often hear that the photo shoots we do for "Playmakers" can be as tough, or tougher than an athlete's practice. This time she just had to stay still and I think it may have been more painful than a full on practice. Ha, ha.

Samantha was a great sport and I would like to congratulate her again on a great high school career!  Way to go Sam!

To see the slide show of all five images go to: http://www.imagesatchieftain.com/sports/winter-2012-playmakers/