TimeLine Media Blog

Recently, I had someone that was on my email list request that I make some portraits for her brother that plays youth football. It would be perfect for my project for making more sports portraits. I have plenty of action shots from players during games, or dancers during competition, but I want to expand my portfolio of setup portraits where I control more of the lighting, posing, and composition. It is no surprise that trying to get a clean image while the game is going on is difficult.

Football Field Set

Most sports photographers resort to heavy cropping to eliminate distracting backgrounds or other elements that take away from their main subject. When I photograph ballroom dancers, I use additional flashes in order to make the colors better, and to make the settings on my camera little less extreme, but the lighting has to cover a large area. It is not setup specifically for one spot, or subject, so it is much more flat overall. With “D”, the football player, we had an open, empty football field to use. It was a very bright, sunny afternoon, so I had to use an ND filter to knock down some of the light going into the camera to keep a shallower depth of field. Adding some flash to fill in helped to bring him out from the darker background making him stand out.

With all the light out there, it would seem to be easy to make this portrait, but bright sun makes for dark shadows. In order to bring some detail back into his face from under his helmet, I needed a flash to fill that in. A flash in a medium-size softbox placed just off camera left brought in enough light to fill in his face, and highlight more of the top of his uniform.

Background Setting

We did a few other poses, but this was another keeper for me. The afternoon sun was to camera left, so I used the flash through a softbox on the right to fill in his left side which was much darker. Had the aperture stopped down more than usual for a portrait since I wanted to keep their home field sign in focus. I am always looking for more portrait subjects, and like having the element of sports for props and settings so contact me if you would like to have some made!

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