photoblog
This time around, I didn’t let the rain scare me away from my shoots. …and I really think it helped improve the visual impact of these portraits.
River Hill sophomore Rena Shi wins with accuracy. She won top honors in the County Championships, but a hurt right wrist held her from advancing further in State play, but not before predominately using her backhand to win the first round of state playoffs. She is photographed at River Hill High School’s tennis courts Thursday, June 11, 2009.
REMEMBER TO CLICK THE LINK TO SEE MORE PHOTOS!
Glenelg Country senior Ryan Kent serves a 125-135 mph serve. He will be playing for Delaware next year. Kent is photographed at the Wilde Lake Tennis Club Thursday, May 28, 2009.
River Hill senior Katie Harman won the gold in the states one and two mile races. She will run for James Madison University next year. Harman is photographed at the River Hill track Monday, June 1, 2009.
The signature low side arm of Ashley Bruns helped the Mt. Hebron senior become the county’s top scorer (103 points). She is photographed at Mt. Hebron’s stadium Saturday, May 30, 2009.
Centennial senior attack Harrison Chaires will be playing for the Naval Academy next year. He is photographed at Centennial High School Friday, June 12, 2009.
Double threat, Hammond junior Travis Clark throws hard on the mound and is a threat at the plate. He is photographed at the Hammond softball field (the baseball diamond was being used) Saturday, May 30, 2009.
Hammond senior pitcher Stephanie Speierman pitches in the high 60′s and has used her defensive power to set the Maryland state career strikeout record. Next year she will play for Michigan, one of the top softball programs in the nation. She is photographed at Atholton Elementary School’s softball field Tuesday, May 26, 2009.
Atholton senior Graham Bazell is the 2009 male runner of the year. He will be running for Stanford next year. Bazell is photographed at the Atholton High School track Thursday, June 4, 2009.
——-Girls Tennis Outtake—–
I really love this photo, but I think I love the image at top of this post a bit more.
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Great stuff
Without gushing, Wow!!!! I’m a fan!
Thanks Josh.
Killer work, Matt. I love the way you embraced the rain and worked with it. Your portrait work is lookin’ sweet!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Matt Johnson. Matt Johnson said: RT @strobist: Matt Roth: Kicking arse at my alma mater PPC, a chain of small weeklies in MD. Check out his sportraits: http://bit.ly/4jv5O5 [...]
Great work!! Enjoyed seeing that the rain became a dramatic feature.
Wow… Amazing lighting, compositions, and creative eye!!! Truly spectacular work! The rain is a huge plus in these photos.
Lovely work. I got directed her by David Hobby. Any chance you can deconstruct you lighting setups?
Props for make a challenging assigment really capture the spirit.
Very impressive Matt. Thanks for the inspiration.
OMG, what powerful imagery, beautifully captured!
Thanks Suzanne. Yeah the rain was fun. …a little scary, but totally worth it!
and Thanks to David Hobby — The Strobist! — for tweeting about my sportraits.
Boom!
Love the drama. Great work!
Incredible! Your images are simply outstanding! The lighting helps so much to strengthen the messsage…
How do we talk you into sharing some lighting info?? Excellent work.
Coming from Strobist and just WOW… really inspiring… Great job, I especially love the rainy ones…
Great work. I mean, absolutely outstanding images. Top notch.
Love the cross lighting and your keen ability to capture the action in a wonderfully dynamic editorial way.
Matt, great work. Any breakdowns of what you were doing? Light placements, what kind of lights?
Wow, really great stuff. Props to you for the terrific pics and to DH for the link.
Let’s get some insight on your Strobist info!
Very, Very, nice stuff. I like them all, but I think my favorite is the shot of Katie Harman on the track.
I’ve learned not to worry about cameras in rain (too much), but how did you protect the flash? Or, was it just a matter of sitting it out there and not worrying about it?
Really nice stuff! You have inspired me!
sure, you took your time and orchestrated some serious lighting, but IMO you forgot to step aside from the cliche sports images and captures, be MORE innovative and imaginative with your settings and subjects, your focal points, your use of b&w (more, plz) or color, drive your subjects to react to your presence and not simply pretend for the camera, what I see here are photos that have been snapped a thousand times over but what I don’t see is something new, creative, eye-catching or interesting
Fantastic stuff Matt – these are mesmerizing.
We want to feature this in our newsletter for myCapture but noticed the albums on Patuxent Publishing’s myCapture page are password protected.
Lets talk and I’ll get you setup with a gratis myCapture account of your own – give me a call at 314-880-4905.
Whoa! You guys are great! Thanks for the kind words.
Okay, deconstruction time:
For the most part I used three alien bee 1600′s, all powered by a Honda eu1000i portable gasoline powered generator, and triggered with Pocket Wizards.
The Honda generator (R.I.P. — it was stolen over the summer) was key to these set ups. It gave me the flexibility and the right kind of electrical current needed to handle a bunch of modeling lights. Plus, it’s a generator and it’s built to handle a few May showers.
For the most part I applied the same lighting mantra to each photo.
I wanted rim light for separation and definition and I needed a main light so you could see their faces/action.
I also wanted to showcase their athleticism in a way you would NEVER see during game play.
For the sake of space, I’ll just highlight a few of the more interesting shots.
Rena’s shot, obviously took place in the rain. It wasn’t a downpour. I’d never bring the gear out for anything more than a light drizzle.
I hid behind the tennis net and asked her to backhand the ball right to my face. She’s the type of player who wins with accuracy. I got hit a few times, but she doesn’t hit too hard.
There are two alienbee 1600′s, only modified with the silver factory reflectors, flanking her. The one on our left is up high (maybe 10 feet) pointing down, and the other is about shoulder level, a bit further back, pointing straight at her. The third light is fitted with a beauty dish and is much closer to her. The arrangement is something like an obtuse triangle.
The next tennis player, Ryan Kent, is known for his size (he’s like 6ft 5) and powerful serve (he tops out at 130 mph). So the galaxy/explosion look of his photo turned out to be somewhat of a lucky break. But it’s not like I planned for it. The original idea was to — shocker — incorporate water. Specifically, freezing the splash of a water-logged tennis ball, getting flattened by the force of his serve. I thought that would be a cool way to showcase his power. I got a few really cool shots like that, but this one kept calling to me. I almost took it out of my edit — mostly because his eyes are closed.
Having said that, one thing I’ve learned is to embrace certain mistakes when shooting, as I like to call it, action portraiture. I’ve also learned to call on your photo friends to assist. My buddy Monica Lopossay helped me move lights around for this shot. Ryan’s set up is very similar to Rena’s, except the light stand on the left is maxed out at (I think) 15 feet and it’s pointing across him so it lights the ball after it’s been hit. The rear right — well, you see where that one is. I asked Monica to move it there in the event that he would be halo-lit while moving through his serve. It never really worked out. The main light on his face, again, modified with a beauty dish. I also climbed on one of those line judge chairs. We shot this at a tennis court that had black mesh covering the court fences. I always try to minimize as much of the background as possible for these shoots. Trying to shoot his serve underneath looked stupid with a wide angle. His torso was huge, his head was small, his arms gangly and the tennis ball was barely visible. By getting up higher than him, I was able to make the tennis ball, racket and ball more immediate.
Runners are hard. Their movement is so predictable and it’s not like they can play with a prop. Their athletic prowess is speed and/or endurance. Howard County is, for some reason, where all the endurance runners live. Luckily the River Hill Track has this HUGE hill leading down to the track. Like I said, I like to minimize what’s going on in the background, so I thought I’d use the track lines. I had Katie run down the outside lane directly towards an alien bee 1600, modified with a beauty dish. I put another AB 1600 on the ground, to the left and front of of the one with the beauty dish, so her feet would be lit. And directly behind her, is another, unmodified AB 1600. One valuable lesson I learned during this shoot is the power of eye contact. I had tons of shots before this one where her body language was fine, but she looked bored. We figured out that she just wasn’t looking anywhere. So, I told her to find a spot on the beauty dish. It was high noon sun, so I knew the strobe pop wouldn’t be that jarring. The difference was night and day.
I’m going to skip the two lacrosse shots (unless someone has some burning questions)… and continue with the baseball photo.
The lights are in that obtuse triangle set up I’ve been mentioning. yes that’s a real baseball. I hid behind the backstop at the Hammond softball field and had Travis’s teammate soft-toss baseballs caked in flour to him. Over all, I think the concept of this shoot is way better than the execution. I wanna revisit this idea with a few modifications. I’m not gonna say what, though. A boy’s gotta have his secrets.
The softball shot, I think, is executed similarly to all the other ones I talked about. But if any of you have any specific questions I’d be happy to answer them.
The boy’s track photo of Graham Bazell only used two lights. It was much darker during this shoot than in most of the others. I was able to throw the light a bit further in this shot than in some of the other scenarios, thus I was able to go wider. I used a 28mm in this photo and the girls LAX shot, but, as you can see, I was really close to her and she’s suffering from a twinge of distortion because of it. Like in Katie’s photo, I asked Graham to run towards the light (hahahaha). The rim light is from an unmodified AB 1600 about 20 feet away (to our right).
Thanks for looking everyone!
Matt
Matt,
These are just great. Every single one of ‘em. DH was right, these sooooo could have been boring, but you knocked these out of the park. Really really nice.
And super super duper kudos for the deconstruction in the comments, gotta love that!
Very cool. Love the baseball photo. Did you dirty up the ball to get the poof of dust?
nope. I used flour.
Solid Work, The Rain Definitely Adds To Some Of Those Shots.
Dude, what can I say !!! WOW this images a great… You have giving me some idea’s for working in the rain…
Awesome stuff! Definitely not your average high school sports shots. Glad to see someone still yields the creative edge. Found your blog on the Strobist blog.
Excellent work, Matt–in lighting, composition, and capturing the athletes’ intensity. And thanks much for the deconstruction…I know that you didn’t have to be so kind as to provide that much detail!
Busty, I was really surprised at your comments. In some sense, yes, we’ve seen this kind of photo before–but typically in Sports Illustrated or some other publication with very high standards. It’s not often we see them in a local paper. Just curious…do you have some examples from your work that exhibit the kind of creativity you’ve asked from Matt? I’m very interested to see what you’re looking for…
Being a children’s and family photographer, this type of work is most certainly out of my comfort zone. A friend turned me on this llink and all I can say is WOW, just WOW!! Gave me a whole new vision of sports photography, for sure!!
Thanks so much for your generous breakdown. I do have a question: at what power did you typically keep your bees set at??
Thanks!
Tessa Rice
This is simply outstanding in every way. Thanks for inspiring this old dog.
Hey Tessa, for the most part, all the strobes were maxed out because I was trying to A. over-power the daylight B. push through an f/22 aperture, and dealing with that stupid 1/250th sync speed.
Hope this helps.
Stunning pictures, I really like them.
Could you tell me how you keep the AlienBees dry?
these are really amazing photos but i think a little less saturation and photoshop would make them even better.
Great stuff. Got here through the strobist site (hope ‘the link doensn’t make your site crash : ) )
Thanks for the breakdown of your set ups.
*bookmarks page*
Joost (Netherlands).
My son just got his Football Jersey for OHS. This shots are going to be my inspiration.
Nice work.
You are killing me! I am an instant fan.
These are great! Thanks for sharing the setups.
Mr Hobby has some handy tips on increasing the flash synch speed
niiiiice stuff. f’reals, stupendous!
The way you play with the elemnts is wonderfull! The cold rain, the burning will to fight against individually limits, the body somwhere between earth and sky – great.
Wow, that is some amazing work! outstanding lighting and image composition! just wow!
Mark,
As a first time visitor to your blog (via Strobist), I have to say very nice work! The ‘Spring Players Of The Year’ photos are fantastic! I am amazed at some of the moments you have captured….very nicely done, and thanks for sharing the deconstruction, and for the continued motivation & inspiration.
Cheers!
Busty: you’re cracking me up.
Mr. Roth: great work – I’ve been shooting for years professionally and you’ve got some wonderful imagery there — but what is more important is that you are approaching your subjects with visual creativity, street smarts, a wonderful eye, and the ability to determine what you want the photo to SAY. Nice going. My son passed your blog on to me (he was equally impressed) and we both predict that small paper just might not be able to keep you for long;-)
Outstanding technique and a great eye for design have raised these images from “run-of-the-mill” to sports art. Excellent work
just awesome stuff. too good!
Congratulations on your spectacular photos! You inspire and motivate me. Just when I get a little too complacent, it’s nice to see another photographer’s work to encourage and motivate me!
WOW! Awesome stuff! Kills ya with the 250th sync don’t it! Really like the last shot (probably more than the first!)
Excellent use of the ancillary lighting. I like how all these pics appear to be shot at night, even though they were during daylight hours. Well done!