In late August I got an email from ESPN asking if I was available October 18 and 19. They needed someone to shoot portraits at Big 12 Basketball Media Days in Kansas City. The short answer was yes, I was. And I did, but it turned out to be both a lot more work, and a lot more fun, than I expected.
“Media Days” are when all the teams from that conference show up with the coach and a few key players to speak with the media (women’s teams one day, men’s the other). Mixed into that day are several video shoots as well as a photo session (me). The original request to do “portraits” turned into portraits of each player and coach on both gold and white backdrops, then various posed shots on white seamless (a 9-ft wide by 36-ft long roll of heavy paper hung from a backdrop stand). The first challenge was figuring out exactly what gear I’d need to do all that.
For years now I’ve been using a number of Flashpoint battery-powered strobes, and thought they’d be perfect for this. I’d use two of the eVOLV 200 units for the gold-backdrop shoot, one in a softbox and the other to light the background. Hanging a white reflector to the side opposite the softbox would bounce back enough light to fill in what otherwise would be heavy shadows on that side of the subject’s face. However, the shoots on the white seamless background, covering a larger area, would require more power. Using a pair of Flashpoint XPLOR 600 strobes (three times the power of the smaller units), I’d mount them on heavy stands inside Westcott Apollo Orb softboxes. One at each corner of the seamless, up high, would provide even light over a large area and prevent heavy shadows behind the subjects.
Being battery-powered meant no need to run AC cords (less chance of anyone tripping), and the four strobes could be controlled wirelessly from a single remote on top of my camera, turning each pair on or off as needed. That remote also let me change power levels on the fly, so I could make small adjustments as necessary. I also brought along the chargers for the four flashes, so they could be recharged overnight on location. Finally, I also carried in a pair of high-power Bowens monolights (AC-powered flashes), as backups in case any of my battery-powered units failed. Thankfully, I never needed those two.
When using flash, I almost always shoot in Manual exposure so I can control how much – or even whether – the ambient (available) light plays a role in the picture. In this case I wanted to overpower the room lighting so my flashes were the only light source for the photos. That insured I wouldn’t have any color cast problems created by the room’s lights. I used a shutter speed of 1/200, then varied the ISO from 80-160 and aperture from f/5.6 to f/8 based on the position of the lights and the subject(s).
The camera I used was a Nikon Z 9 with 24-120mm f/4 lens shooting RAW files. For backup, I had it writing those files to not just one, but both CFexpress cards in the camera. I rarely set the camera to do this, as I’ve never had a card failure. But again, a re-shoot would be impossible, so this gave me another level of redundancy. And as a backup in case of camera issues, I also had a Nikon Z 6 II in the bag with a second lens. Knowing I’m prepared to handle problems that might arise helps me sleep better at night. Now for the work/fun part.
The “day” (time I had to shoot) lasted a full five hours, as I’d get each of the ten coaches and teams for about 25-minutes at a time, start to finish. That is, if they were on time. Oh, and the players would usually they’d need to change into their uniforms too. Which meant I generally had about 20-minutes to do the two series of portraits and the rest of the photos. Not surprisingly, at the end of the first day I was exhausted. But it was fun too.
I was told that after the portraits, “let the players have fun.” Which meant asking them what poses they’d like to do, both individually and as a group. Sometimes I’d have to suggest things, other times they came up with their own ideas. And that was the best part of each day. Those 10-15 minutes with each team made all the rest of the work worthwhile.
The first day I shot about 600 frames over the five hours, the second day nearly 900. After it was all done, I had to deliver about a hundred of my favorites, as JPEGs, and then upload each day’s entire RAW shoot (thankfully I have high-speed internet!).
To give you an idea of what I did in those ten hours over two days, here are some of my favorites (All photos are straight from the camera, no editing applied. Since that’s how ESPN would see them, as RAW files, I wanted the pictures to look good right out of the camera):
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Reed, you make it seem so easy, so natural. Wonderful portraits of the individuals and groups
Great images, story and technique tips!