We often don’t talk about the trust that is built when creating! I’ve photographed professional Long Jumper Will Williams at numerous competitions over the years, but creating with an athlete in studio is always more personal because of the sense of vulnerability. This session started with conversation around training and preparing for the Olympic Games, then led into our goal with the art we were creating that day. The beauty of these sessions is you don’t see the performance, you see the person, and I always remind my clients that they are more than their performance. Here’s some of the art we made that day.

Would you believe I only used a 3 light set up, with color gels on a white background to create this set of images? For the key light I used a beauty dish with a grid on it, and used multiple reflectors to create some nice soft fills on the subject. And for the background I used 2 color gels, a blue on one side and a red on the other, both at different heights.

Lighting Diagrams: Set.a.light 3D

Checkout my full #PhotoshootBreakdown video below where I go into detail about this shoot!