The Athletic Body Photo Shoot

Submitted by Keith Bridgman 

The human body is by far the most fascinating subject for a photographer. There are so many expressive ways the body can be captured it is almost like possessing a never ending array of opportunities. Capturing the athletic body can be one of the most expressive and challenging techniques for a photographer. Recently, myself and Jason were given an opportunity to photograph two extremely fit athletes inside of a gym location. Here's my take on how I pulled it off.

We used two model talents, Toy, a lovely young lady who competes in Strong Man contests, and Terrell, a former athlete who still maintains a superb fitness level. The goal was to capture their physiques using dramatic lighting in such a way as to accent their form and athleticism.  

The gym was poorly lit with harsh florescent lighting. To offset this, I set up a simple black background, a black bed sheet hung between two light stands. Four Godox speed lights were employed. The first light was a bare light on a stand that stood behind the model. This was powered down to about 1/16th power to provide a hint of rim light helping to separate the model from the background. Two homemade striplights were set up to either side of the model allowing about two feet or so of space between each shoulder and the lights. These were powered to about 1/4th power and provided plenty of side light to help define the shape of the body. A fourth light was positioned inside an octobox and hung overhead on a boom shooting pretty much straight down.

 This served to add muscle and depth defining shadows. All lights were fired and controlled remotely from the camera using a remote trigger. 

Neither of the models had done much if any posing, so we had to work with them some to bring out their personalities. 

Because of the harsh florescent lighting, I shot everything in a manual mode setting the base exposure to kill all of the ambient light so the photo taken without the speed lights was completely black. In this case, ISO 100, f/7.1, 1/100 of a second did the trick.

I used my Sony A65 with a Minolta 35 - 105mm lens varying the focal length depending on the shot. 

Once the base exposure was reduced to killing the ambient light, I engaged the speed lights to illuminate each model.

We had a great time as both subjects performed brilliantly. Thanx to Toy and Terrell for helping us out and to Workout Anytime for allowing access to the facilities.