I have been doing a lot of portraits lately (as you can see) and after Jamie (my boss at Icon) sent some of my portraits to a few magazines I got a email from the editor at Rise with three upcoming assignments. Here are a few images from the first assignment.

For the shot my two assistants and I hiked up the side of a hill to try and get away from the “school feel.” The girls were nice and once they got the “giggles” out of them they were awesome models for the shoot.

p.s. Thanks to Jake and Brian, who are awesome for hiking up about a mile to the spot on the hillside with 7 lights about 60 pounds of extension cords, battery pack and extra lightstands and modifiers and we only used two, oops. Thanks!

The lighting is very simple. big Softbox in the front. (30×60 inch with an alienbee 800 inside) and an alienbee 800 with an umbrella on the right to give the background a little light.

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.