First Fall 2008 Football Action

I was treated to a gorgeous sunset tonight while shooting my first football game of the season between the Hobart High School Brickies and the Gary West Side Cougars. The game was held at Gary Roosevelt High School, because West Side's football field isn't playable (though when I was there for a portrait a few weeks ago, it looked great) .

Once I saw the sky start to turn orange, I ditched my 400mm lens for my 28-70mm zoom and stayed low on the sidelines even with the line of scrimmage. I waited for a play to come near me to incorporate the players and the colorful sky, and I got my wish pretty quickly.

Normally, when a play comes directly at me (as in the sunset image), I would have gotten up on my feet and moved back by the point that image was shot. But, I decided to stay low and continue firing, hoping the play would stop before helmets and hard padding met my body. Luckily, the players that spilled onto the sidelines did so about ten feet to my left, and I ended up with a nice image to start off the season.

To my disdain, I also had to shoot a few feature photos of fans for the paper's news section. I find that hunting for interesting fans to shoot at the game often takes my concentration away from the action. Luckily, I found some enthusiastic girls who didn't mind me hanging around for a while to get them mid-cheer (or, as it ended up, mid-laugh).

Hobart's Richard Oglesby (9) runs to score a touchdown in the second quarter against the Gary West Side Cougars held at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Ind., Friday, August 22, 2008.

Hobart High School students (from left) Kristi Burgos, 15, Melissa Wronko, 15, Nicole Garrison, 15, and Joe DiMaggio, 16, watch a football game between Gary West Side High School and Hobart High School held at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Ind., Friday, August 22, 2008.

Gary West Side's Nicholas Hill (left) is brought down by Hobart's Kendall Gunn during the first quarter at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Ind., Friday, August 22, 2008.

Quick Football Portraits

Over the past few weeks, I've been shooting mugshots and portraits of area high school varsity football teams for The Post-Tribune newspaper's annual football "tab" preview section. The assignments are pretty straightforward: Shoot mugshots of 15-20 key players along with coaches, as well as shooting a portrait of a player(s) to be featured in the story about that team. Having not done anything really creative for the paper in a long time, the portraits were a great opportunity to try some edgier looks that I don't normally get to experiment with for this particular client. All of the portraits (including the one above shot at dusk at Gary Roosevelt High School) were shot with one Canon 550EX flash mounted in a medium Photoflex Silverdome softbox. The flash was triggered with Pocketwizard Plus units. Here are a few of my favorites:

Gary West Side defensive tackle Christopher Woods Jr., 17, on the football field at West Side High School in Gary, Ind., Friday, August 8, 2008. Woods, a senior who also plays defensive end and outside guard, is looking to attend college at either Indiana University Bloomington or Iowa.

Lake Central varsity left tackle Mark Kalinich, 18, on the bleachers of the football field at Lake Central High School in St. John, Ind., Thursday, August 7, 2008. Kalinich, 6'4" and 305 lbs., is looking to attend college at either Harvard, Brown, MIT, or Yale.

Munster High School senior Aaron Estrada on the football field at Munster High School in Munster, Ind., Saturday, August 9, 2008.

The image of Aaron (above) was shot just the bare 550EX without the softbox, as the natural light at noon was difficult to overpower with the softbox in place.

To give these a dramatic feel, in most of the portraits, I layed on the ground and shot up on the players using a wide angle lens (17mm). This makes the players tower over the viewer and gives them that larger-than-life superhero vibe. Second, as with anything I shoot, I always always expose for the highlights, and retain them as I tone the image in post. This is especially evident in the last portrait of Aaron. While shooting, I made sure that as little of the clouds above him were overexposed as possible, despite the sun peeking out from behind them every few minutes. The 550EX at full power just a few feet away from the subject helped accomplish this. Too many photographers blow too much of their highlight detail either in the camera or in Photoshop, leaving them with sloppy looking results.

Hopefully these images will show that just one light off camera can make otherwise simple portraits have a more polished look to them. The light kit I use is very simple and takes only minutes to set up. To all the photographers that say they don't have time for setting up one light, stay tuned for the blog about the game show road race I lit in a parking lot at night last weekend with 70+ fixtures.