Trade Secrets: 'Swimmer of the Year'

Contents:

Contests:

Newsletter:

Members:

About Us:

Members log in here with your user name and password to access the your admin page and other special features.

|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2006-09-19

Trade Secrets: 'Swimmer of the Year'
Alex Boerner's portrait of a high school athlete is next in a series of SportsShooter.com features called "Trade Secrets."

By Alex Boerner, Vero Beach Press Journal

Photo by Alex Boerner / Vero Beach Press Journal

Martin County High School senior, Tina McIntyre, is the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers Girls Swimmer of the year.

This photograph was done as part of a series of portraits for the local high school Athletes of the Year back in the end of 2005.

The month prior to working on these photographs I had done a series of illustrations on haunted spots in our area of Florida, and found that sitting down and sketching out different ideas was a good way to work around to a final decision on which way to go with a particular photo. I know that drawing out ideas is no big secret, but it was something that I had never done before, and it helped me out quite a bit in this situation.

When it came time to begin the sports portraits, I figured I'd do the same thing and I began scratching out some bad drawings of ideas that weren't going to work. I had the photo shoot of the swimmer scheduled a couple of days away and I was getting frustrated with my lack of halfway decent ideas.

Finally I decided to relax, sit down, close my eyes and try to envision something that I had never seen before (which doesn't necessarily mean that it hasn't been done). The first idea was just to pour water over her head, as if it was falling out of the ceiling or as if she was under a waterfall. Then, shortly after that came the idea to have her flick water at me.

On the day of the shoot I bought a tarp for the studio floor and collected a couple buckets of water because I had still planned on doing the waterfall shot. The girl and her mother met me at the newspaper building and the shoot got under way.

The theme running throughout the portrait series was "school colors." It's not a very original or exciting theme, but it provided a starting point. The colors for the school that she is from are gold and blue, and with her being a swimmer I thought it made sense to go with mostly blue to emphasize the idea of water.

I set up one 1600-watt White Lightning monolight with a tight grid spot and a doubled-over blue gel pointed at the back white wall of the studio, which created a hot spot in the middle with some falloff as the light spread out.

Photo by Alex Boerner / Vero Beach Press Journal

Outtakes from the shoot

The key light was another 1600 watt White Lightning monolight on an overhead boom with a barndoor and so much black construction paper taped on - in different shapes and sizes to plug light leaks and create the right effect - that it looked like the head of Sigourney Weavery's mouthy nemesis in the "ALIEN" movies. I don't recall at what power level they were set, but in addition to the two lights in front and behind her, I set up a small battery powered Lumedyne, to her right, at 400 w/s.

We did a couple of other poses first, like a tight face shot and a photo of her in the towel, and then decided to do the "flicking" shot second to last, before the waterfall.

I taped a plastic bag around the lens of the camera, got her into position, and set a bucket of water at her feet. All she did then was bend down, get her hands full of water, raise herself up and flick the water off her hands at my lens all in one fluid motion. Her momentum coming up gave her hair a little bit of weightless look that made some people ask if it was shot underwater. It took some doing to get one right, and I've included a few outtakes to show which ones did not work.

What I think really makes the final photo work, for me, is her eyes. She really has a great expression and connection with the camera that she brought out all on her own. After she and I looked at the result we didn't even bother to do the waterfall photo.

If you would like to see more portraits from the series, I created a hidden gallery on my SportsShooter.com page containing the rest of them: http://www.sportsshooter.com/alexboerner/tcpoys

Alex Boerner is a staff photographer for Vero Beach Press Journal.

"Trade Secrets" is a series of educational features where SportsShooter.com members reveal the inside-information about how they were able to create a specific image (or two.) To nominate an image for this feature, please send a message to the SportsShooter.com admin staff here: http://www.sportsshooter.com/contactus.html The SportsShooter.com admin staff reserves the right to accept, or not accept, any nomination.

Related Links:

Boerner's member page