"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." - Vince Lombardi
I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t grinning ear to ear about this shoot. Having the opportunity to photograph my brother’s senior portraits was a big deal! We all were wondering if he’d make it to his senior year of high school haha. Kidding aside, it was a blast working with Riley, and I was glad he actually took it serious. On top of that, we got some amazing photographs! Who knew Riley could look that good?
One of the greatest things to hear after a shoot is how much fun someone had, when they went into the shoot dreading it. What I think helped was the fact that we shot both Riley and Michael’s photos during the same couple of hours. This helped ease both of their nerves, and made it all around a more fun experience. I couldn’t have asked for a better morning. We started at sunrise, on Lake Maxinkuckee. With the sun bursting over the trees as we set up, I knew we didn’t have a ton of time or else we would miss some golden shots. Luckily we got our lights up and in position just in time, giving us the perfect shot over the crew house. Yes, this high school has it’s own building for the crew team! I know, I went to the wrong high school. I said this to myself more times over the weekend than I’d like to admit.
Riley has a lot to be proud of this year. He’s on the prep hockey team, a big accomplishment after tearing the same ACL twice. It was a long and painful road to recovery, but he has come back stronger and faster than ever before. Nobody is exactly sure what this legend’s plans are for the future, (NHL obviously), but we’ve heard through the grapevine, a few years of juniors, then possibly playing D1 varsity hockey for the new program at ASU.
Regardless of Riley’s plans, he can actually take a nice picture. Even better when he’s in his natural environment *crocodile Dundee accent*.
I’m very proud of all Riley has accomplished so far, and know he will do great things in the future. Congrats on graduating little brother! :)
Now if you've made it this far, you might be just interested enough to see some behind the scenes photos + know a little bit about what gear was used to create these shots!
As you can see in the 2 behind the scenes photos above I was using a 2 light set up. For the most part I was using a 43" Westcott Apollo orb as well as a 36 x 48" Westcott Soft Box. Inside both of these was a single LumoPro LP180 speedlite paired with a Pocketwizard Plus X radio transceiver.
I would switch between the 2 lighting modifiers depending on which I wanted to use as the key light and which as the fill. For most of the on ice shots I used the larger softbox as the main light and the apollo orb to create subtle highlights focused more on the face.
The camera I was using was the Canon 6D, and I switched between the 85mm f/1.8 and the 24-105mm f/4 depending on the scene and look I was going for.
For most of the shots, besides the on ice ones, I tried to match the ambient light as much as possible, while providing a bit more highlight on the body and face to separate the subject from the background slightly.
And to end this article, check out this amazing school one last time! Taken with my iPhone 5.
