SSU Athletics

And now for something from the day job…

I get to do a lot of interesting photography in my position for Shawnee State University that I normally don’t share here. Unlike wedding photography, where time is a limited commodity and everything is set up on the go (and usually by the skin of my teeth), I get to take my time and set up more elaborate lighting than usual for these kinds of photos.

The irony is that I set up this particular shot like I would for a wedding, very much on the fly.

The photo above, of the SSU Bear Club representatives for 2014, was done using a technique I have used with several wedding parties. The entire photo was lit with a single light source, not much bigger than a fist. How is that possible? With just a little trickeration.

Although I did only use one light, I technically used it about 21 times to get the result you see here. Take a look below and see if what I’m saying makes more sense:

As you can see, I am using an assistant (the unusually-patient-toward-my-generally-nonsensical-photographic-tendencies Amanda Eaton) to light a small portion of the photo with a video light. I have my camera firmly planted on a tripod, so I can take several photos with the light in different positions and make a composite image using Photoshop.

Although in this case we probably spent about 20-25 minutes getting everyone set up and taking some test shots, on a wedding day I will usually spend less than 5 minutes to do something similar.

Below, you can see some more from this session. All of these were also lit with the video light, and most of them took about a minute from conception to set up to completion.

I get to meet a lot of outstanding young people at Shawnee State University, and these athletes were fantastic to work with. I look forward to sharing some more of my work from here in the future.