I was contacted by Kingswim, a fantastic organisation that specialises in teaching kids to swim. They needed a new image library of professional but fun portraits of their ambassador to use for promotional material. The location was to be one of their pools here in Brisbane, QLD. That ambassador is none other than Australian swimmer and Commonwealth Games Gold medallist Shayna Jack.
It was such a fun shoot, got a little creative with some splash photography at one point, and I’m well happy with the result. It’s not hard to get a good shot of this sports star.
Not every portrait session is the same, whether it’s a corporate portrait or business head shot, a fashion shoot or editorial photography, I find each session comes up with its own little obstacles that threaten the shot you’re trying to achieve. Figuring out how to overcome them is the fun bit.
I started off with the studio photographs, setting up a white background and four lights. I use Paul c. Buff Einstein. For this shot I had 2 strip boxes with a grid either side of Shayna, pointing in to get that rim light around her sides. An octobox was used as key on the right and for fill, a large softbox further back, up high and in line with the camera.
This next shot was fun, saved till the end, hats off to Shayna for still mustering up enough expression to kill this portrait. Some more hats off to Joe Grey my assistant for not getting any splash off onto my studio light behind her. Just a two light setup for this one, octobox as key and one hidden behind her with a reflector and grid on pointing directly at the back of her head to get that shimmery look in the water splash. I had the lights set on “action priority” for this one and made sure they were shooting at lower than half capacity to ensure the flash duration was short enough to freeze those smaller droplets. The Einsteins really held up their name here I think.
These are a couple more favourites of mine. A mixture of natural light and the octobox.
Big thanks to Shayna for being so easy and fun to work with, and to Joe Grey for assisting as well shooting some fantastic behind the scenes shots for me, here’s a couple of them to finish.