Playmakers III

DHPH quarterback, Chris Sandoval.

Some times less really IS more.

Trying to come up with a dramatic portrait for the sport of football is something that many other photographers have been very successful at, I on the other hand have struggled.

I had been looking for ideas in every place I could think of prior to my heading out to Dolores Huera Preparatory High School to photograph Scorpion quarterback, Chris Sandoval. And honestly, I had no idea what I was going to do other than drag the kid out into the nearby prairie.

(I mean, heck, he is a Scorpion right?)

There was nothing too exciting about the day, it was warm and sunny and their wasn't a cloud in the sky. So the whole dramatic cloud-filled sky photo wasn't going to work and when I looked to the west all I could see was that incredibly bright sun!

I figured maybe I'd just use what I was being given. There was no way I was going to get any kind of image of this kid with him looking into the sun unless I wanted a photo of him with his eyes closed, which I didn't.

I thought of what it might look like if I had him with his back to the sun and stood in silhouette. With him being six foot-plus tall, he made for a powerful looking silhouette. Then I figured I would want to see his face so I would have to do some lighting. The sun was so bright that I had to use my flash at full power. At first I tried to use two flashes, but that was too much light on the body of my subject so I went to one strobe and moved it a little closer to him. I really make use of the fact that you can zoom the strobe in and out. In this case I zoom it to the max which is 135mm (or maybe 105mm) to get as much light on the subject in a small area.

Quarterback and a flash.

When you shoot a photo like this and you don't have anyone assisting you, the key is to stand in your subject's shadow. Otherwise there is going to be all sorts of lens flare and the image just won't work. I am glad that Chris is so tall because it allowed me to step back and stand in the very top of his shadow when I took this photo.

I use Pocket Wizard radio remotes to trigger the SB-800 strobes that I use to light my subjects, this allows me to stand a ways away and use longer lenses. I used a 70-200mm lens to shoot this photo. It is one of my favorite lenses and I would say that I use it more than 50% of the time.

I used the cloning tool in Photoshop to remove the barb wire fencing that was behind my subject. I wouldn't normally do this, but the Playmakers are stylized images and to get the looks that I go for in these portraits, I do some altering in Photoshop. I don't do this kind of thing in my regular daily news and sports photos. They are all straight up un-retouched other than the things that you could do in an enlarger such as toning and cropping.

The entire time I spent on this set up, photo, and tear down was about 30 minutes. Now I will spend hours trying to figure out what I will do for next year's football portrait, and after all that, I may scrap the plan and just wing it in the hopes of doing the player justice.