I had the opportunity to collaborate recently on some sports portrait photographs of Olympic gymnast Raj Bhavsar.  Raj was on the 2001 and 2003 U.S. World Champion gymnastics team, and was a bronze medalist on the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team in Beijing.

After a weather delay derailed our first shoot, we regrouped a week later and had a wonderful day with clear skies for our rescheduled shoot.  One of the chief concerns was finding a suitable location for the shoot.  Raj’s gym was a typical fluorescent lit nightmare for photography.  I knew that we could get cleaner and more dramatic photos outdoor somewhere, but Raj is a badass in the rings event…..where do you hang his rings outside, so that you can still get a sky/clean background behind him?

After thinking for a few days, it hit me…..why not hang them from the goalpost of a football field?  This is Texas, so football fields are everywhere and easily accessible.  We wanted a location that might give us several different options, both with the rings and without, so we finally decided on Galveston Island.  I used Google Earth to scout football fields, and to look at the directional layouts of various fields.  Google Earth rules, and has become an invaluable scouting tool for us.

We began the shoot at Galveston Ball High School (we got permission from the school district first), and used a ladder to rig Raj’s ring setup to the crossbar of the goalpost.  We decided to do this shoot with Raj dressed in jeans, and we did some shots with and without his shirt on to showcase his highly developed upper body.

After breaking down the ring setup, and after an interview and quick costume change we took Raj down to the Galveston seawall, and photographed him there.  The evening light was beautiful and warm, so we went with natural light on this series.  For sunset, we traveled to the end of the seawall and photographed him holding an amazing pose as the sun went down.  The sunset shots were lit simply, with a Plume Wafer Hexoval 180 held by assistant Nathan Lindstrom over very uneven rocks in high winds.  Raj was really interested in photography, so he made a fabulous subject.  I can’t wait to work with him again soon.

I recently photographed Texas Rangers pitchers Neftali Feliz and Derek Holland for Sports Illustrated.  While brainstorming ideas for the shoot with the photo editor, he mentioned a picture I had done several years earlier for a Sporting News cover of CC  Sabathia in which I had lit Sabathia’s face with a small strobe hidden in his glove.  He mentioned that he would like to see this treatment with the Feliz/Holland duo.

In the original photo, we lit the background with a strobe with a blue gel, to give a graduated spot on the background wall behind Sabathia.  I then used a (no kidding!) 25 dollar Morris mini slave strobe in Sabathia’s glove……since the strobe was circular and of similar size to a baseball, we even shot some photos of him “throwing” the strobe/ball at the camera.  It made a pretty cool picture.

Strangely enough, that photo of Sabathia was taken in Arlington when he was pitching for Cleveland, and visiting the Texas Rangers.  Several years later, here I was in the SAME ROOM beneath the Ballpark at Arlington shooting Feliz/Holland in a very similar setup.  Weird.  Sometimes I feel like I know the hallways, storage rooms, and locker rooms of these stadiums better than the actual field.

The downside of using the Morris Strobe, is that they aren’t very powerful, nor can you vary the power.  We decided that the much more sophisticated Canon 580’s would probably work much better……however hiding them in a tiny pitcher’s glove proved to be a challenge indeed.

Anyway, we knew the Rangers photo was to be combined in the final layout with several other pitchers from around the league, so we kept the background a simple black.  I decided to rimlight the two guys with a pair of medium softboxes ( Plume Wafer 100) with a 30 degree grid on each side.  We added a Plume Wafer 140 in the center of the set on a low stand directly below the camera, for fill.  It was important to set the fill light at a low enough power to keep the white uniforms from blowing out.  We just wanted the fill to barely illuminate some detail in the uniforms and faces of the players.  Then we placed a Canon 580 Speedlight with an Omni-bounce in each player’s glove with a Pocketwizard Multimax to trigger each strobe.

It took some careful testing to get the ratios just right, which we of course tested before the players arrived (I think we got about 10 minutes with them).

Basically, we set the camera up at F11.0, then adjusted the softbox rimlights a full stop hotter (F16.0), the speedlights in the gloves were set and metered to 11 1/2, and the Wafer 140 softbox, our fill light, was set to  5.6 1/2.

In addition to this photo, we also shot individual portraits of both players, and a couple of different versions of a “safer” shot of the two of them together.  For the “safe” shot, we simply ditched the 580’s, kept the rimlights in place, reposed the players, and raised the fill light onto a taller stand and adjusted the power up one stop.

Sometimes you have an idea in your head, and even though you don’t know who you might eventually use it on, you know that one day, you’ll eventually realize your vision and take that photograph.

For several years, I knew that I wanted to photograph someone, (ANYONE), their face painted with theatrical face paint, emerging from a pool of water, or just under the surface. I could picture this photograph in my head before I ever had a subject to photograph. Usually, my imagination wandered toward blue water and gold paint….maybe it would be a photograph of an Olympic swimmer or diver, who knows?…. but nevertheless, the vision stayed with me for quite some time.

When I received an assignment to photograph Warren Sapp, a big NFL football star, who had recently changed teams, I knew the time had arrived to float this harebrained scheme.  Sapp had just signed with the Oakland Raiders, whose crazed Raider-Nation fans dress up in other-worldly costumes, face paint, crazy masks, etc… and attend games in costume. He was known for having an outlandish personality matching his oversized frame. My thought was that he might be crazy enough to let me try the face paint on him, in a silver color matching the Raider Nation fans I had seen at so many Raiders games. I made some sketches of him in the crazy fan uniform and of the “face-emerging-from-water” photo that I had been thinking of for so long.

It was the off season, so there were not the usual practice time constraints, or teammates watching, and since we were doing the shot at his agent’s (Drew Rosenhaus) home in Miami, there would be no nervous team PR man there telling us we couldn’t do it. After setting up the shoot and making sure Drew had a pool (who doesn’t have a pool in South Beach, right?), I asked Drew’s marketing guy about my idea….black water, silver face paint….an abstract homage to the Raider fan. I’ll never forget his response….”Hell yeah! He’ll put all that spiky costume shit on for you too!”

I had a tight schedule with another shoot in Indianapolis, a half day at home, and then a shoot in Denver, with two days at home before the Sapp shoot in Miami. I used what little time I had to scurry all over town looking for props to create a true Raider Fan outfit…..I found latex shoulder pads and a skull belt and shoes via a Gene Simmons Halloween costume, ordered a Raiders jersey, which I ripped to shreds, and bought football pants and Umpire’s shin guards, to which we attached little silver painted skulls and spikes that we found at an art supply shop. I painted and touched up the Halloween costume, which was looking a little old.

The next trick was to test my black water idea. I knew I wouldn’t have long with Warren, and I wanted to make sure everything was perfect before we tried such a crazy idea. I also thought it might help to show him the photo so he would know what we were going for. I knew that we needed a black pool, since a regular pool would have picked up a light blue tone from the water. I have a fairly large koi pond in the back yard, and I had recently bought one of those pre-formed black plastic water garden pools, to keep fish in while cleaning my main pond….I decided it would make a great test pool. I needed to find a test subject with a shaved head like Warren, who was also nutty enough to let me cover them with face paint and lay in my pond for a test photo. I somehow convinced my only bald-by-choice friend, David, to help me out.  I determined from the test that we needed a larger light source, since it made more interesting reflections on the water, and that the water needed to be disturbed, or it would just look black.

I went to the airport the next morning for a leisurely flight to Miami….I built in plenty of time to look around the neighborhood, rent additional lighting gear and prep for the shoot the next day. Unfortunately, a huge thunderstorm had other plans, and I literally spent the night in the airport while doing the constant rebooking/flight cancellation dance between gates all night. I finally made a flight at 5:00am, and barely made it to Miami in time. I’ve always been anal about arriving in town for big shoots at least the day before, so 18 hours of flight delays made me very nervous.

A trusted assistant Cy Cyr, and makeup artist Paula Abraham were already en route from Orlando and met me at Drew’s house. Paula setup her airbrushing tools, while Cy climbed in the pool and covered the bottom with black plastic. We used weights to secure it to the pool floor and keep the plastic from floating around.  We set up lighting for both shots, and waited for Warren to arrive.

It was an interesting location for a shoot. Drew is probably the most famous sports agent in the world: he’s the only agent ever featured on the cover of SI, and he’s reviled in many NFL front offices for his hard-hitting negotiating skills. For us, he was a gracious host, and we were happy to photograph Warren in a comfortable, relaxed environment.

Warren was great during the shoot…..an absolute showman, and he went through a million great poses for us, screaming and hissing like some sort of Raider monster. He was having a great time, and was fabulous to work with. We had both setups done quickly and we were able to get him back in his normal attire and on with his day.  As I returned to the airport, I was able to scratch another crazy idea off my list.