Here are some portraits I did for ESPN Rise magazine on one of the top female basketball players in the country. She was great to work with and was a natural in front of the camera.

Plus I felt pretty short next to here (shes 6′2).

This was for a cover and inside feature story so I tried to get some photos in her normal clothes as well as her uniform.

Here are some of my favorites.

Be sure to click on the photos for larger sizes.

3 lights, 1 beauty dish in front two lights in back with strip boxes. (same light set up as below minus the background light and background.) You may notice this pose from a recent post of mine.

Camera: NIKON D3
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
Lens (mm): 62
ISO: 200
Aperture: 13
Shutter: 1/250
Exp. Comp.: +0.7
Program: Manual
ICC Profile: Adobe RGB (1998)

Camera: NIKON D3
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
Lens (mm): 70
ISO: 200
Aperture: 14
Shutter: 1/250
Exp. Comp.: +0.7
Program: Manual
ICC Profile: Adobe RGB (1998)

1 beauty dish off to the right of the camera sun used for back light

Camera: NIKON D3
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
Lens (mm): 29
ISO: 200
Aperture: 14
Shutter: 1/250
Exp. Comp.: +0.7
Program: Manual
ICC Profile: Adobe RGB (1998)

1 beauty dish with ab800 front, strip box upper right corner (behind)(for separation) a 20 degree grid spot on the basket (low power)

Camera: NIKON D3
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh

Camera: NIKON D3
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
Lens (mm): 42
ISO: 200
Aperture: 16
Shutter: 1/250
Exp. Comp.: +0.7
Program: Manual
ICC Profile: Adobe RGB (1998)

Assistant Ric holds the Beauty dish and Christina’s mom helps out by holding the side light.

Ric again holds the beauty dish, up and over this time. AB800.

1 beauty dish with ab800 off to the left, sun from back

Camera: NIKON D3
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
Lens (mm): 60
ISO: 200
Aperture: 13
Shutter: 1/250
Exp. Comp.: +0.7
Program: Manual
ICC Profile: Adobe RGB (1998)

1 beauty dish with ab800 off to the left, sun from back

Camera: NIKON D3
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
Lens (mm): 70
ISO: 200
Aperture: 13
Shutter: 1/250
Exp. Comp.: +0.7
Program: Manual
ICC Profile: Adobe RGB (1998)

About two weeks after the first set of basketball portraits another tournament came up, this time it was at USC with a lot less players. Some of them I knew from the last time I took pictures of them which was cool. They opened up a lot more specially after I emailed them some of their last shots.

This shoot I had three people helping me move stuff around which was nice because we had to move the set up twice. We had everything in place and we were waiting for the first player to show up when my arch nemesis the “event staff” showed up. I know they are just doing there job, but most of the time, they do it very poorly and they are given way to much power in these rolls. We then moved down stairs with 7 lights, lightstands, cords, camera cases…ect.

We found a nice red curtain for a background for the first few pictures then moved again outside to the outdoor basketball court which was fun, but hard to get the players out of the building.

The light set up with similar to the last. 2 background (rim lights) and one big softbox in the front. Also, I never thought that basketballs would be so scarce at a basketball camp.

The set up, and Brian standing in for the bball players.

Last month I went to Tucson AZ for the Arizona Cactus Classic. It is a tournament for all the top high school basketball players in the country, we are talking next Lebron and kobe here. My job was to get portraits of all the players.

I was first set up (by the tournament people) in a room with very little to work with. About three feet of shooting space, seriously. So I scouted around the arena and found a loading dock to take all the photos in. It was great because it a had a very gritty feel to it and I could get three differnt looks in a very short amount of time, which was good because I got between 1-5 minutes with each of the players. I was seriously grabbing them as they were walking into the gym to play.

The light set up was pretty  simple. I wanted to create a very dramatic light to go with the gritty-ness so I used to back lights (alien bees b800) with no modifiers, just reflectors for rim lights a small soft octa-box in the front for fill and another light hitting the background (on some shots).

I used a nikon D3 for all the shots with a 24-70mm.

Here are some shots from the event.

Remember to click on the photos for larger sizes.

(Wanted to mention these are best viewed in Firefox for some reason. Safari makes them look distorted when clicked on.)

Please feel free to ask questions.

During games I try to take a few minutes from shooting the normal stock action and focus on other things. For this shot I was at the USC versus Oklahoma basketball game. I found a hotspot on the court (from the lights) while I was walking around the arena on the top level. So I grabbed my 70-200 and 1.4 extender, exposed for the hotspot to make it silhouette the players and turn their shadows black. (iso 200, shutter speed 1000, and f5.6) The color in the floor is a color shift from the lights.
If you have any questions about the shot, please leave a comment or email me.
Thanks for looking.

The hotspot on the court

Here are some other general shots from the game, mostly OJ Mayo…actually all four.

I had to take a photo of OJ Mayo’s Shoes for work.


OJ Mayo as he is announced in the starting line up. (They lowered the lights and put a spot on him, I layed on the ground underneath 3 giant bball players to get a shot.

One room, one chair (which i stole from the lobby..err ask politely for), and like 30 people with an average of 1-5 min each. Here are some of my favorites.

Remember to click on the photos for larger sizes and true color.

Bryce Taylor, Oregon

Taj Gibson, USC

O.J. Mayo, USC

Kevin Love, UCLA
Dustin Snipes, Awesomeville

The set up, it was different depending on the person but this is the room i was in. The white background over on the wall was used for headshots. The table had a white table cloth on it and we used it as a reflector. The shot with the dark background was done with a black table cloth held up by Ric.
Thanks for looking!