Not much to say here. Sometimes you go to a shoot and this is what you find. Nothing. Going. On.

In photojournalism we often have to shoot portraits of athletes, and earlier this summer, my assignment was to take shots of Virginia Tech quarterback Logan Thomas, and teammate, running back David Wilson. My original shot was to pose them with the goalposts in the background, but when I arrived at Lane Stadium, the goalposts were taken down. It was also a brutally hot and humid day. The underbelly of Lane Stadium is a concrete encased area where it is about 20 degrees cooler than the outside temperature, so I figured it would be best to do the shoot there. There wasn’t much around, and my first test shot looked like this :

Not much to work with, but I knew that with the correct lighting set up I could make something out of it. I brought three lights (2 white lightnings and and alien bee), along with a couple of umbrellas and grid spots. The main picture for the upcoming paper was to be of Logan Thomas, but when he and David came down for their pictures, Logan was still putting on his uniform. David Wilson was dressed, but in pads without his shirt. After meeting the two of them and exchanging some ideas about how I was going to do the shoot, David mentioned the iconic shot of Bo Jackson with his pads and no shirt, shot 20 years prior for Nike. I said we could replicate a shot similar to that if he was interested, and he agreed. David is a very nice person, his positive attitude made for a very easy and productive shoot. My first light tests with David looked great, and you can see the lighting set up in this shot :

Two crossing lights creating a contrasty looking picture. The third light in the forground of this picture was unplugged. David is pretty natural, and I didn’t have to direct him very much. The next picture is my personal favorite of the series, but since it was horizontal, it wouldn’t make it on to the cover.

The lighting is direct, and powerful, as is his body position and glare. Next, I worked on a vertical picture for the cover.

This picture has a clean background, room for text, and nice light, all crucial elements for a cover shot.

This is the final page :