ATHLETES OF THE YEAR

For the past week or so Ive been working on The Gazette’s Athletes of the Year special section that will come out in about 3 weeks. It’s something they put out each year that highlights the accomplishments of 12 (this year) prep athletes that have excelled in their sport for the season. I was handed a list of 6 girls and 6 boys from the prep sports editor and given a deadline. Ive actually enjoyed it thus far since I dig larger projects like this that give me a lot of creative control. Ive seen some of the previous years’ products and I wanted to do something totally different than what has come before me. I immediately had the idea for the magazine cutouts. Ive tried this in the past with some silly personal work, but now I can actually make it happen with something serious. The basic idea was to nail down a nice, consistent lighting concept in our studio at the paper and shoot each of the kids on white seamless. The lighting I used was 1 background light, 2 rims and a large softbox as a main with a white bounce to even things out. I began shooting the kids Saturday and finished my last one today, so 4 full days of actual studio time. Each athlete will have one shot on the cover and one for their page inside with the shots on the cover being more interactive and playful. I might have shot 2 athletes on different days, but I want to make their cover (cut out) shots interact in a way. Its really a hard concept to explain so I put together the little mock up you see here. It was my first kid I shot Saturday, Kaitlin. I cut her out and added some “tape” in Photoshop for effect and to show our designer Matt what I was going for. Now that I have all my shots, I will edit the shots and get together with Matt and make it happen. Hopefully I can see my vision come to fruition without incident.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 9:35 PM and is filed under Editorial, General Portraiture, Sports and tagged with athletes of the year, Colorado, Colorado Springs, Gazette, internships, lighting, Newspapers, Portraits, special section, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.