Sports Photography – Page 3 – Robert Seale's Blog

David Price for the cover of Sports Illustrated Baseball preview

SI_Cover_Price_SEALE — The final cover shot with blue background added in post by SI imaging.

I recently photographed 2012 Cy Young Award-winning pitcher David Price of the Tampa Rays for the cover of Sports Illustrated’s baseball preview issue. Each year, SI publishes several regional covers for the baseball preview, along with a centerpiece story, and of course all the usual team specific preview spreads. I was fortunate enough to do the Price cover and the opening centerpiece spread story on the Rays pitching staff. Legendary Sports Illustrated Staffer Walter Iooss and longtime staffer Robert Beck shot the other regional covers , so I was in good company!

This was a team effort with different photographers shooting covers in different cities, yet the magazine wanted them to look the same. I was sent a rough comp with a pitcher following through in his delivery, on black, with the broken glass added to the foreground in post. This is not an uncommon assignment, especially in the advertising world, so being able to interpret a comp and match what other photographers have done previously is a useful skill.

The first critical task was finding a place to shoot. Since we were trying to keep these consistent, we needed a large room where we could essentially set up a studio. Spring Training in Florida is often super bright, super windy, and there aren’t many private spaces away from fans and other teammates to do this sort of thing. We essentially needed to build a black box of black fabric 12 x 12‘s to control light in the shoot area, and we were lucky to find a spot in the minor league clubhouse that worked well. Setting up an overhead, a background, and two side 12 x 12’s in the wind and weather was something I was trying to avoid at all costs. You would need a crew of 3-4, and a million sandbags to do that, and we were on a limited budget.

Tampa Rays — We photographed all five starters in various stages of delivery.

Since we were dealing with white uniforms, and the background was black, I decided to rimlight the pitchers from behind, using two large chimera strip banks oriented vertically on each side and fill from the front. Since we had left handers and right handers, I decided to use two small lightbanks on boomed C-stands positioned close to the ground in front of the pitchers (Chimera mediums I think…I normally use Plume stuff, but these were rentals). We had each light on it’s own Profoto 8A pack so we could shoot everyone fast. We didn’t know when we were setting up if we would get all five pitchers in rapid succession or spread out throughout the day, but we wanted to be ready so that we could maximize our time with them.

We varied the ratio slightly on the front lights depending on whether the pitcher was right or left handed (we just flopped settings on the packs accordingly). By doing this, we were trying to keep them from looking too flat. We also used cinefoil on the bottom third of the front lights to prevent the legs from getting too hot in the photo.

Since we were inside, and not on a mound, we drug the lights outside the night before the shoot and lit a practice mound in the same fashion so we would have foreground plates for the retouchers at SI to use.

We photographed all five pitchers throughout the day, in various stages of their delivery, but when it was David Price’s turn, we asked if he minded shooting a few photos outside. He was relaxed and said sure, so we promptly moved him out to a practice mound outside of the building we were in. We worked quickly and shot him with an Elinchrom Octabank at full power (2400 w/s) to overpower the high 1 PM daylight. Not an ideal situation, but you take David Price whenever you can get him.

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The next day, we finished the story on Tampa’s pitching factory, shooting a setup with the Tampa manager and pitching coach, and a young prospect, Taylor Guerrieri, mentioned in the story. When we were done with Taylor, we asked him to hang around and pitch in the foreground for us, which made a nice framework for the coach photo…and of course we shot “normal” stuff of both coaches as well.

My favorite Florida assistant, Cy Cyr, was nice enough to join me on this adventure, and helped us out tremendously by renting gear for us from Rummel Wagner at Central Florida Strobe in Orlando.

In the end, SI imaging changed everyone’s backgrounds to blue, and they used a different mound, which was lit a little differently. All the photos were opened up in the shadows so that they were a closer match. The coolest part about SI’s final presentation? If you looked at the magazine on an ipad, you hear breaking glass as the cover appears. Cool.

Photo Shoot with Heisman winner "Johnny Football" Manziel at Texas A&M

Last week, in preparation for the upcoming Heisman Trophy announcement, Sports Illustrated sent four photographers out to shoot portraits of the four leading Heisman candidates. My sports portrait photographer colleagues all made great images, and SI published a multi-page story on the Heisman frontrunners just three days before the announcement. Peter Read Miller photographed USC WR Marqise Lee, Darren Carroll photographed Kansas State QB Collin Klein, and Todd Rosenberg photographed Notre Dame LB Manti Te’o, while I got the call to shoot Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, known more commonly here in Texas by his nickname: “Johnny Football.”

Manziel, a redshirt freshman sensation, was sequestered from the press by his coaches until the week before the big announcement. When he finally spoke, the country heard from a charming, positive young kid who was enthusiastic and enjoying every minute of his journey. I’ve shot a ton of athletes, and normally we do a few “tough guy” or heroic poses, and we tried a few with Johnny, but he literally couldn’t stop laughing and smiling. The best shots were the ones where he was grinning from ear to ear. That’s truly him – just a bubbly kid who’s happy to be here – overflowing with excitement that he gets to wake up each day and play QB for the Aggies…..and that was BEFORE he won!

For the shoot, due to newfound demands on his time and a TON of media interest, we had a shoot time of 2pm, which is not the most flattering light to photograph in. Actually, we were overjoyed to have any time with him at all, and Texas A&M SID Alan Cannon, who’s a really great guy I’ve known for many years, made it all happen. We had a 30 minute slot (really only 25 minutes, because SI was also doing a quick video interview for the website in the last 5 minutes). We had to really plan all our shots in advance and have everything tested and set up ahead of time in order to maximize our time with him.

We really wanted a dramatic stadium tunnel look, with Johnny lit from above and the background blown out. I had done a similar shot of Jason White at Oklahoma years earlier, and the editor had mentioned using a tunnel if possible. We scouted the stadium for a couple of hours before the shoot, and didn’t find any suitable tunnels. At A&M, many of the tunnels were narrow with chain link gates/fences in them, and it wasn’t clean enough in my opinion to pull off the shot we had in mind.

I also knew that the photo was probably running as a square in the magazine so I shot most of the shots loose enough so that they could be cropped in that shape. There was also some discussion of converting all four players to sepia (which they decided not to do) so I tried to shoot with contrast in mind.

The sun was high and blistering, there was no shade to work with, so for the first shot, we planned to place the sun behind him and use it to our advantage. By placing the sun behind his head and underexposing the scene, we silhouetted the stadium (and Johnny). We added a Hexoval 180 from the left and made a dramatic portrait with a darkened Kyle Field behind him.

For the next setup, I wanted to emphasize the large “Home of the 12th Man” sign on the student side of the stadium. We were able to find a small tunnel entrance on the 50 yard line, where I shot from, and then we backlit Johnny from each side with Wafer 100’s. Assistant Nathan Lindstrom then used a long boom to place a Hexoval 140 directly in front of Johnny’s face, centered right over the camera, while Butch Ireland ( a longtime and very talented photographer colleague from College Station) manned an 8 x 8 Westcott ScrimJim to keep the harsh sun out of the scene. We also ditched the backlights and did a few dramatic shots with the Hexoval boomed to the right side.

We then walked Johnny over to a corner tunnel, which had a really interesting pattern in the poured concrete wall. It almost looked like a hand painted muslin fabric. We set up two other lighting setups there. The first one was a raw reflector head, which cast a shadow of Johnny on the wall. The idea was to replicate the look that stadium lights would have in the tunnel if you were about to take the field at night. The other setup was just a Wafer Hexoval 180, which we used to do some classic 3/4 shots of Johnny from the waist up and tight on his face. I wanted some simple shots with a big light source that would capture his ebullient personality.

When we stopped, I looked down at my watch – we had done 6 different setups in three locations around the field in 21 minutes! Johnny sat down for his interview – and then…oh Lord, the video shooter, Dan Blust, a talented videographer from Houston, interviewed me about the shoot. SI did this at each location and put together a nice behind the scenes video which you can see here.

Darrell Royal portrait

Darrell_Royal_SEALE — Darrell Royal, Austin, Texas, 2005.

Darrell Royal was the University of Texas football coach from 1957-1976 and was responsible for Texas winning three national championships. He passed away Nov. 7 at the age of 88 after a long battle with Alzheimers.

Royal was revered all over the state. As the son of a coach in Texas, I grew up on a steady diet of Darrell Royal sayings and stories. It felt like I was going to see the wizard when I pulled up in front of his house in 2005 for a brief portrait session. He seemed a bit frail and unsteady, and it was only later that I found out he had Alzheimer’s. I wish I could have taken my dad on the assignment, but alas, it wasn’t feasible. Although I’ve never bothered any of my sports subjects for autographs, I did break with tradition on this one…..I had him sign a copy of his book to my dad….I’m pretty sure it said, “To Coach Seale-“

Here’s a great column by Jim Dent on Coach Royal.

Portraits of Olympians

Â© 2008 Robert SealeRobert Seale Photographywww.robertseale.com832-654-9572 — Mary Lou Retton, photographed at her home in 2008.

Since the 2012 Summer Olympics in London is in full swing, I thought it might be interesting to pull together a collection of some of my favorite Olympic sports portraits. I’ve had the fabulous opportunity to photograph several notable athletes, and I’m hoping to meet and photograph more of these folks in the future.

I photographed 1984 Olympic gymnastics champion Mary Lou Retton with her daughters in their backyard a few years ago for a magazine. Mary Lou, now in her early 40’s, is in incredible shape and is still incredibly fit and ripped. It was a fun shoot, but it’s interesting to note that at least one of them was much more interested in being an equestrian than a future gymnast. They were all good sports, though and played along for a memorable photo.

I’ve photographed Steven Lopez several times. He won the gold in Taekwondo at the Olympics in 2000 and 2004, and a bronze in 2008. He’s in London competing again on the 2012 Olympic team.

Laura Wilkinson, who won a gold medal with a horrendous broken foot in 2000, was a joy to photograph, and was willing to try several different concepts, including a waterline shot, and some slow shutter flash shots of her diving during sunset. She also competed in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. Today, she is a motivational speaker and has her own foundation.

Stuart Holden, a professional soccer player, was on the 2008 US Olympic soccer team. Although he’s had a string of injuries, he’s still playing professionally in Europe.

Bicycle motocross champion Kyle Bennett was on the US Olympic BMX team in 2008.

I photographed Peggy Fleming, who won the gold in figure skating in 1968. After a breast cancer scare in the late 90’s she became an outspoken advocate for breast cancer awareness and early testing. She stays in fabulous shape (she’s 60 in this photo…) with a regimen of yoga and running.

Raj Bhavsar is an incredible gymnast who won the bronze in 2008. He was also an alternate on the 2004 team. He has two gymnastics elements named after him, and is most well known for his prowess on the rings. After retiring from competitive gymnastics, he is now performing with Cirque de Soleil.

Jeremy Lin portraits for Sports Illustrated

Houston Rockets Jeremy Lin — Jeremy Lin posing for a high flying pass on his first day back in Houston. This photo was featured as a double truck in Sports Illustrated. © 2012 Robert Seale

As Jeremy Lin was in the process of inking his deal with the Houston Rockets last week, I got a call from Sports Illustrated. Often in sports, when a star player is traded to another team, there is a big fancy press conference to introduce the player to the media. Usually the player stands at a podium with the new owner, professes his love for the new city and holds up a freshly minted jersey with his name on the back. Interviews follow with all the local media outlets: radio stations, TV stations, teenage sports bloggers, and typically, the surviving newspaper in town.

What most people don’t see, is the behind the scenes photo shoots. Put together in a rush, the sleepy player gets herded to multiple locations throughout the building to pose for the NBA, a magazine or two, the local paper, and a host of team sponsor PSA’s. It’s a challenging situation, very similar to “media day” shoots that we all engage in during preseason training camps. Each photographer or news outlet gets the player for a couple of minutes and they produce the best sports portrait they can.

After I hung up with the SI photo editor, I immediately called my good friend, Rockets photographer Bill Baptist, who I knew would be doing the same gig for the NBA. I found out that we were scheduled to be on one half of the practice court, since the other half was being used for the press conference setup. Billy had to do two large setups, so he generously offered to have our shoot moved to the empty arena floor. I quickly jumped at the chance and agreed that a larger room would be beneficial for all of us. This way, we wouldn’t be crossing cords or competing for space. Plus, the last time Billy and I were that close together, I’m pretty sure he kicked my ass at tennis.

Stellar assistant Nathan Lindstrom and I showed up to the Toyota Center the next morning with a ton of gear, and made our way to the main arena floor. An empty arena makes a great photo studio, but unfortunately, it really was empty: as in, no floor! Since the arena hosts a different event almost every night, the wood basketball floor was in storage – along with the basketball goals, etc.

With the help of some friendly folks at the arena, we were able to get one of the basketball goals rolled out onto the empty concrete floor. I figured that, even if the floor didn’t show, we could at least utilize the goal as a background element for context.

We put together lighting setups in two locations: A wide angle view with the goal in the background, backlit on both sides with Profoto 8A’s and large Chimera gridded softboxes. We used a Plume Wafer Hexoval 180 as the main light near the camera.

On the other setup, we put together a seamless paper backdrop with two different lighting setups: a three light setup with two Plume Wafer 100’s with Lighttools grids, and a Profoto Beauty dish on a boom just above the camera. The other setup was another Wafer Hexoval 180 to the right of the camera. We used three Profoto Acute 600’s for power on the seamless setup.

Lin showed up in a brand new red Rockets uni and made his way to our set. After shaking his hand and welcoming him to Texas, we quickly put him through both seamless lighting setups, and then standing and dribbling poses on the backlit concrete floor setup.

Part of Lin’s appeal is his status as a young, springy, high-flying point guard. He looked great flying through the air, going to he hoop, and passing in mid air to his Knicks teammates during the a few months of “Linsanity” last season. At the end of the shoot, I asked Lin how his knee was feeling.

He said it felt great.

Great enough to jump on a concrete floor?

Sure, he said.

Ok then, let’s do it.

I placed the camera, a Canon EOS1DS Mk III on the floor, and proceeded to shoot Lin leaping straight in the air with the basketball goal in the background. He looked great – our only minor tweak being that of changing his hand positions during the jump. At the end of the shoot, I handed him a towel, shook his hand and said thanks. I looked down at my watch and a mere 12 minutes had passed.

He left the arena soon after and was mobbed……not by New York paparazzi, but by mouth-watering Houston real estate agents, eager to spend at least some of his 25 million bucks.

Robert Seale speaking at Rich Clarkson Sports Photography Workshop

gymnast.gog.7.1.04 — Stacy Geare, Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado. © Robert Seale

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been asked back to the Photography at the Summit Sports Photography Workshop July 19-24. I’ve been a lecturer at the workshop 4-5 times, but it’s been several years since I’ve attended. The Summit Series of Photography Workshops were founded by legendary photographer and editor Rich Clarkson, who in addition to running Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper photo staffs in Denver and Topeka, was also Director of Photography at National Geographic during the 1980’s. I’m looking forward to working with Rich’s great staff and helping out the students there as they embark on assignments at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

This year’s staff also includes good friends and colleagues like former Seattle Times staffer Rod Mar, Sports Illustrated staffer John McDonough, New York Times Photo Editor Brad Smith, AP staffer Mark Terrill, and his brother Joey Terrill, who does fabulous work for Golf Digest and a variety of magazines.

Colorado Springs has some fantastic locations and is one of my favorite places to visit. Should be a great week! You can register for the workshop here.

Creating a Swimming Portrait

Liz Jackson — This one is lit with two Wafer 100's with grids for backlight, and a Hexoval 140 directly over the camera.

I’m really drawn to barren landscapes. I told a photographer friend of mine once that if I could establish my business at the edge of El Mirage dry lake bed in California and shoot all my photos there, I would be a happy camper. There’s something about the flat textured landscape with distant mountains in the background that makes your work look like you just landed on Mars.

I had heard from friends in Utah that the salt flats often were coated by a thin layer of water during the early summer, and I thought that location would be a fabulous one for a portrait of a competitive swimmer reflected in a mirrored otherworldly landscape. Things don’t always go as planned, and when I arrived to scout the area, I found a lot of mud, but no water.

This is where newspaper experience becomes a handy thing. I knew from my feature photo hunting days that I could make a cool photo with little more than a puddle to work with. With the right lens and an extremely low angle, I knew I could make a 2 foot wide puddle look like a lake. After considering the possibility of building a tray of water using 2 x 4’s and a black tarp (it works – ask any car photographer from the early 80’s…), we eventually found a puddle right behind a rest stop. The rest stop had a water hose/shower set up so people touring the area could wash mud/salt from their feet before getting back in their cars. How convenient.

I tested the look with my Salt Lake City based assistant Ryan Faulkner, and it looked great. The next morning at sunrise, I photographed our swimmer with our “lake”, using a Plume Wafer 100 mounted to a Manfrotto extension pole so that Ryan could boom the light near her face and still stay out of the frame. We used a Profoto Acute 600 for this photo.

I had another photo I really wanted to make, and that was a tighter image of our swimmer, backlit from both sides with Wafer 100’s and Lighttools 30 degree grids, and a Plume Wafer Hexoval 140 directly above the camera on a boom. As the sun came up, we made a few other photos with the beautiful early morning natural light.

Lance Armstrong in 4 minutes flat

UPDATE 8/24/2012: Lance Armstrong Portrait photographs available – contact us directly for information.

I recently had the opportunity to photograph seven time Tour de France champ and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in Austin, Texas for an editorial client.

Lance was preparing for his Tour de France comeback, so he was only in Austin for one or two days in the time period that would make our deadline, so there was a very narrow window to schedule the shoot.

Celebrities have lots of demands on their time, and are often dealing with tons of requests for interviews, photo shoots, etc. Lance preparing for the Tour was no exception. On the day we were shooting him, he had a charity event scheduled, two or three television interviews, a live radio broadcast, and our shoot….all crammed between 7:30 and 9am, so that he could train the rest of the day.

3/4 length with the broad Hexoval 180 source.

Lance owns a really cool bike shop in downtown Austin called Mellow Johnny’s, and the shoot (as well as the other events) was scheduled for the bike shop location. We scouted the shop the day before, and determined that the best location would be in the basement area of the shop, where we could essentially set up a studio shoot, away from the charity event crowd and his other interviews. For the shots of Lance, we knew ahead of time, that we were only going to get a portrait of him in a Livestrong t-shirt. He was not going to pose in a jersey and bike helmet, he wasn’t going to pose on a bike….it wasn’t going to happen, so, in a way, it simplified things. The question then became, how many looks can we get out of a black t-shirt portrait in 4 minutes?

With limited time and no props, and no environment, I decided to try to get as many different looks as possible in the short time frame available. If you try to move a celebrity around to multiple locations, or move lighting equipment during the shoot, you are wasting their time, and you risk the shoot being over even quicker. The best way to photograph them and get multiple looks, is through careful planning, and essentially encircling them with all the lighting equipment you’re going to use.

I decided on three shots: The first would be a double rimlit tight portrait, with a small stripbank over camera; the second shot would be a broad softbox source –a large Plume Hexoval 180 slightly from the side; the third shot, would be a dramatic profile, lit with a Plume Wafer 100 with a Lighttools 30 degree fabric grid, with a projection of a bike wheel centered behind his head.

Another broad lit hexoval portrait, with different toning.

We started with a grey seamless backdrop, because we knew in the limited space that we had, we could use it as a grey/tan backdrop, we could make it go black, or if necessary, the art director could make a clip path and turn the background white….it gave us a range of options.

We arrived early, near 5:30am and began our setup. Each lighting setup was plugged in to a different set of power packs, so that we could switch between setups simply by turning power packs on and off. This kept things organized and simple, and allowed us to get multiple looks without fumbling around, switching heads, packs, stands, etc.

Andrew Loehman, the assistant on the shoot, actually hung a real bike wheel from a piece of fishing line, and held it at the proper distance between the background and the light to create the shadow of the wheel on the wall. A custom Dynalite projection spot provided the light. With more time, we could have created a custom bike wheel “cookie” for the spot, but with limited prep time, an actual wheel was used to provide the signature bike wheel shape.

Lance was in and out of our setup in about 4 minutes. Other than turning his body 90 degrees for the profile shot, he never moved, and even with that limited amount of time, without changing his wardrobe, and without a bike, we were able to give the art director several looks to choose from for the story.

(All photos © 2009 Robert Seale. All Rights Reserved. – please do not post, right- click, steal, or otherwise use any of our photos without permission. For licensing info, contact Robert Seale Photography through the “Contact Info” link on the right)

The last shot, a profile with a Wafer 100, Lighttools 30 degree grid, and projection spot.