Sport
On Friday morning, the morning of Juneteenth, I had the privilege of photographing a protest march starting at Capital One Arena heading to the MLK Memorial. Listening to the words of Bradley Beal and Natasha Cloud before the march started about why they were marching and their experience of racial discrimination and intolerance were beyond moving. Keep fighting. Keep marching. Black Lives Matter.
I would be lying if I didn’t say that I was pretty hyped for this shoot. But I didn’t have a ton of time to be hyped for it…
4pm on Thursday Jan 30th - Phone call from SLAM - ”Hey can you shoot the best female high school junior in the country tomorrow morning from 11am-Noon?”. My reply (I’m paraphrasing here) “F*ck yeah!”.
So with no time to prepare as I was shooting a Wizards game in DC the day of the phone call, I had no choice but to wing it on the shoot. I arrived at the Azzi’s high school at 9.30am. I was getting from 10am-11am to set up and then 11am-Noon to shoot. The first thing I did was decide on 4 locations/backgrounds within the gym.
First I wanted to shoot with the hoop in the background and utilize some symmetry and place Azzi at around about the free-throw line.
Second I liked the logo in the center of the floor and I would place myself higher up on the bleachers to get the perspective I wanted.
Third I liked the look of the bleachers as the repeating pattern can look nice.
And fourth something simple to finish off with and the red padding behind the baseline would be a good contrast to the black of the jersey Azzi would wear.
With the shoot moving quickly between 4 shooting setups I needed to keep the lighting simple enough to seamlessly move from one shot to the next. Working with two Profoto B10’s and single Profoto B10plus made this super easy.
The first two setups utilized three lights - the Profoto B10plus with a 2’ Octo as the key, and then the two Profoto B10’s as rim/side-lights with Zoom reflectors attached.
The final 2 setups had 2 lights and then 1 light.
The 3rd set of the shots, which we did on the bleachers (forgive the lack of a setup shot had the same light and Octo as the key and just used one rim/side-light (some with a vibrant pink gel added).
The fourth and final set of images used just the main light. I liked the shadow created on the padding here.
A quick selection of some of my favourite images from the shoot…
Big thanks to Camille, Christian and Sam (not pictured) for helping facilitate!
- Stephen
The Washington Mystics had a hell of a season. But the Seattle Storm played amazingly and deserved the win.
Game shots:
Victory Shots:
Champions portraits:
WNBA using the portrait shots on their Instagram:
- Stephen
Congrats to Elena Delle Donne and the Washington Mystics on an incredible season. You played your hearts out and represented! Be proud!
Earlier in the year I teamed up with Team Fruit and Veg to photograph Elene Delle Donne for their campaign to get everyone eating more fruit and vegetables! We had a fun shoot playing around with a bunch of fresh produce.
- Stephen
Earlier this NBA off-season the Washington Wizards traded for Austin Rivers. Here are a couple of shots from our session.
- Stephen
