A few months ago I was contacted by the ALA Patriots Gridiron Club to photograph the seniors of the 2023 team for a new printed and digital program.
Wanting to elevate what the team had created in previous programs I pitched a creative brief similar to campaigns I had shot with NFL athletes from the Arizona Cardinals, Jacksonville Jaguars and Minnesota Vikings.
I was also inspired by the work of fellow sports portrait photographer James Quantz Jr. and the South Carolina Gamecocks.
As an added bonus for the creative shots – I picked up some of the ProLightMods softbox covers to create a stadium light look for the background.
We set up the first portion of the photo shoot on site at ALA against a black backdrop.
The keylight was a Paul C. Buff Einstein strobe with a large octabox camera right which we gridded to keep the light from spreading out.
Two rim lights were set up with Silver PLMs (both were Paul C. Buff Einsteins).
We then set up 2 lights with 3×3 softboxes and the ProLightMods covers to mimic the stadium light background.
The last piece of gear was a fog machine to create an atmosphere around the players for the lights to bounce off of.
The campaign was shot with a Canon 5D Mark IV and a 70-200 L series lens.
I added a 7-stop ND filter which allowed me to stop down and shoot between f2.8 and f4 which added with the longer focal length, allowed the background lights to be lightly out of focus.
Since some of the players were unavailable on the shoot date – we built a replica of this exact set up at my studio, The Hive Studios, to photograph the remaining players the following week.
The results were a fun, high contrast, deep toned portrait set up which the players were ecstatic about once seeing the results.
PHOTOGRAPHER: James Patrick
PHOTO ASSISTANT: Shayla Pelton
James Patrick
IG @JPatrickPhoto
YouTube @JPPhotoAZ
JamesPatrick.com
