Lighting setups

Summer is one of my favorite times of the year because we get to come up with and execute creative ideas that carry across all of our sports’ seasons. It’s a long process involving 4 departments and tons of people. I generally shoot all of the promotional materials for football, soccer and volleyball in July so that billboards, advertisements, and social media campaigns can be rolled out before school starts. Once we all agree on one theme (which can take hours and hours….and hours), it then becomes my job to execute the lighting scheme to get the right look. This year’s setup took about two hours to perfect. The individual shoots last about 10 minutes each. 

For this year’s setup I used five lights. All of the lights are specifically set to an output that serves a purpose.

Lights one and three are back lights set off the subject’s shoulder to create a rim effect. These lights are set to two stops brighter than your exposure. When you look at the finished product, you’ll see that the edges of the player are brighter than the rest of the images. 

Light two is a massive overhead softbox that creates an envelope of light, wrapping the subject and giving dimension. The light measures about 8 feet wide and was hung from a curtain about 15 feet in the air above the player’s head. This light was set to one stop over the exposure. 

Lights four and five were set to a half-stop under the set exposure and became the main lights for the image. Light five was moved about five feet further back, thus making it more of a fill light. 

All lights were fired simultaneously using pocket wizards that sync with my camera. The end result is a properly lit photo that can be used on billboards, posters, buses, and magnets. 

All that being said, I love my job. Happy Monday!