Baseball Portraits
How do you make your 6 Year Old look like a star for his Baseball Portrait? Move beyond basic poses and spend more time in the portrait session than what a photo shoot with hundreds of kids allows.
During Spring break, my Son Aidan and I did some portraits in the setting sun at Midway Park.
Volleyball Action and Portrait Photography Mashup
Among the team and individual photographs I completed last week for Prolink Atlanta Volleyball, I had some time to work with one of the fifteen year-old teams on some higher concept staged action photographs.
The concepts for these are still a work in progress and will be taken further in the future. My goals with the lighting was to help highlight the player as the subject, while reducing the background and improving the stop-action sharpness of the photographs.
Nathan’s Portrait Session
I had these under embargo as it was for a Christmas surprise – but never brought them to the blog! Nathan was a first grade football player for the Lanier Bowl winning Midway Park Wolverines team. Nathan played both ways during the season and some of his action photos also appeared in the blog.
With the weather we had in early December, we scheduled studio time instead of a location session. The portraits were part of a photo book that I put together for Nathan’s Dad as a Christmas surprise.
Studio Portraits
As I blogged about last spring, I want to create unique portrait experiences for athletes that move away from the ordinary sports portrait that so many young athletes get.
I’m also now working on the studio experience – as the field of play is not always available, it makes sense to also provide a studio experience that has a twist versus the conventional sports portraits. I’m trying to do away with the well used looks and develop new ideas.
This is my son Aidan, who plays U6 Soccer at Atlanta Soccer Academy this fall.
A Different Spin on Sports Portraits
I’ve been working on the side, outside of my action photography, to develop a strong portrait offering. Several Sundays ago, I had the opportunity to photograph eight-year old Softball pitcher Jessica on the field to create a set of images for a poster.
My goal in portraits is always to evoke the athlete’s natural personality, show their competitive side, and create some unique, powerful images that take advantage of what can be done in portraits versus what is available during a game.
Britton and Colette’s Portrait Session
Saturday evening at the beautiful Stars Soccer Club in Milton, Georgia I photographed Britton and Colette. Britton and Colette are long time teammates and agreed to be photographed for Dennis Murray Photography’s 2008-2009 advertising campaigns. There are more photos to come from this shoot – stay tuned to the site.
Several big thanks to some partners and vendors for making this possible:
- Stars Soccer Club for making available part of their incredible campus in Milton. Simply put, there are not many facilities of this size or beauty in the Southeast.
- Willow Lloyd of Lloyd’s Promos and Lloyd’s Soccer in Charleston, South Carolina for pulling together a quick, small quantity apparel order for my athletes to wear.
- PPR Atlanta for having the best stock of any Photographic rental house, anywhere. PPR Atlanta provided Honda’s fantastic EU2000 generator for the shoot.
- Nick Jennings for the big assist Saturday night with all of the lights, generator and bags.
- Most of all, Britton and Colette for volunteering to model for the shoot, and persevering through two hours of shooting. Also a big thanks to Britton’s parents for driving both of the athletes to Stars for the shoot.
